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Prince Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov (; 17 October 1734 – 24 April 1783) was a favourite of the Empress Catherine the Great of Russian Empire, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire (1772), state and military figure, collector, patron of arts, and General-in-Chief.
He patronised M. V. Lomonosov, D. I. Fonvisin, V. I. Bazhenov and gave them financial support. Honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Arts (since 1765). He collected paintings (including Rembrandt, P. P. Rubens, Titian), sculpture, Chinese, Japanese and Russian porcelain, hunting weapons, etc. (Orlov's collection has been preserved almost completely; it is now in the State Museum-Reserve "Gatchina" of Gatchina). A large landowner, particularly of the Gatchina manor, where Orlov commissioned the construction of a Gatchina Palace and a landscape garden.
He became a leader of the 1762 coup which overthrew Catherine's husband Peter III of Russia and installed Catherine as empress. For some years he was virtually co-ruler with her, but his repeated infidelities and the enmity of Catherine's other advisers led to his fall from power.
After the event, Empress Catherine raised him to the rank of count and made him adjutant-general, director-general of engineers, and general-in-chief. They had an illegitimate son, Aleksey who was named after the village of Bobriki, and from whom descends the line of the Bobrinsky. Orlov's influence became paramount after the discovery of the Khitrovo plot (led by Fyodor Alekseevich Khitrovo) to murder the whole Orlov family. At one time, the Empress thought of marrying her favorite, but the plan was frustrated by her influential advisor Nikita Panin.
He was one of the earliest propagandists of the Slavophile idea of the emancipation of the Christians from Ottoman Empire rule. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, he convinced Catherine to send the Navy at the Mediterranean, and was involved in the formation and dispatch of artillery teams to the front. In 1771, he was sent as first Russian plenipotentiary to the peace congress of Focşani, but he failed in his mission, owing partly to the obstinacy of the Ottomans, and partly (according to Panin) to his own outrageous insolence. In 1771 in Moscow he stopped the spread of the plague epidemic, which caused a "Plague Riot" in the city, stopped looting, opened hospitals and orphanages.
To rekindle Catherine's affection, Grigory presented to her one of the greatest diamonds of the world, known ever since as the Orlov Diamond.Malecka, Anna " Did Orlov buy the Orlov ?", Gems and Jewellery, July 2014, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 10–12. By the time he returned — without permission — to his Marble Palace at Saint Petersburg, Orlov found himself superseded in the empress's favor by the younger Grigory Potemkin. When Potemkin, in 1774, superseded Vasilchikov as the empress's lover, Orlov became of no account at court and went abroad for some years. He returned to Russia a few months prior to his death in Moscow in 1783.
For some time before his death, he had a serious mental illness, probably a form of dementia, which progressed towards complete mental collapse. After his death, the Empress Catherine wrote, "Although I have long been prepared for this sad event, it has nevertheless shaken me to the depths of my being. People may console me, I may even repeat to myself all those things which it is customary to say on such occasions—my only answer is strangled tears. I suffer intolerably."Kaus, Gina (trans June Head), Catherine: The Portrait of An Empress, Viking Press, New York, 1935, p.314.
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