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Igor V. Babailov, Hon. RAA

Igor V. Babailov, Hon.RAA, KStA, MFA/Ph.D.(NASAD), D.Litt.(Hon.Causa) is a world-renowned American portrait artist. Deemed Living Master by his contemporaries, he has painted over 2,000 commissioned portraits including Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, Prime Ministers, Fortune 500 CEOs, members of nobility and British Royalty, and three Popes for the Vatican.

Igor V. Babailov, Hon.RAA, KStA, MFA/Ph.D.(NASAD), D.Litt.(Hon.Causa) is a world-renowned American portrait artist. Deemed Living Master by his contemporaries, he has painted over 2,000 commissioned portraits including Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, Prime Ministers, Fortune 500 CEOs, members of nobility and British Royalty, and three Popes for the Vatican.

He is the only portrait artist to receive The Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2022), one of the most prestigious awards in America, and his name read into the Congressional Record. Knighted Chevalier of the Order of St. Anne (est.1735), he is a Distinguished Fellow at Catholic University of America, Honorary American Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts (est.1757) and received an Honorary Doctorate from Cumberland University. Other distinguished awards and honors for his artistic achievements include Vatican Pontifical Medal, George Washington Presidential Coin, Award ‘For Excellence’ from U.S. Military Commander Gen. David Petraeus, and the Joe DiMaggio Official Major League Baseball Award for Portraiture, presented at Yankee Stadium.

His George Washington portrait hangs in Mount Vernon Museum, and the Vatican Curator acknowledged Babailov as Maestro for his portrait of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, selected by the Pope to represent his Papacy in the Vatican Splendors Museum Tour, where it hung alongside the works of Michelangelo, Giotto, Bernini, and other Masters of the Renaissance.

A child prodigy, Babailov began his formal classical art training at the age of nine, and in the span of 16 years (1974-1990) he attained the doctoral level of traditional fine art education, contributed to his unparalleled skill in academic drawing (or drawing from life), which today is a fundamental challenge for many artists.

“Many with a resumé as formidable as that of Igor Babailov’s would be tempted to rest on the thick cushion of laurels that he has accumulated, yet he continues to set the bar higher for himself … ,” – writes Elizabeth Lev, renowned art historian from Rome, in the Foreword to his book Legacy Portraits.

Babailov is a member of the National Arts Club in New York City and his mid-south studio is in Nashville, Tennessee.

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