ORLEY, BERNARD VAN, an eminent painter, was born in Brussels about 1490. After studying at Rome under Raphael, he returned to settle in his native town, bringing back with him much of the taste and the grand style of the Italian masters. In a short time he had risen to professional eminence. Margaret of Austria, the ruler of the
Netherlands, appointed him her painter; he executed several pictures for churches both in Antwerp and Brussels; and his pencil was employed by Charles V. in painting, as cartoons for tapestries, several hunting pieces representing the emperor and his nobles in the Forest of Soignies. At the time of his death, about 1560, his pictures had amounted to a large number. A list of them, and of the places in which they are to be seen, is given in Stanley's enlarged edition of Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers. Two other artists called Orley—namely, Richard Van and Jan Van—were also natives of Brussels.
ORLOFF or ORLOV, GREGORY, a favourite of Catherine II. of Russia, was born in 1734, and having entered the Russian army, served in the Seven Years' War. He had a handsome figure, a genteel bearing, an unscrupulous conscience, and all the other accomplishments essential to a tuft-hunter. Accordingly, he had not been long in St Petersburg when the Grand Duchess Catherine made him her favourite paramour, and her accomplice in her ambitious plots. His fortune rose still higher, when his mistress in 1762 had assassinated her husband, Peter III., and had mounted the throne. Dignities and riches were lavished upon him; he was allowed to wear the picture of the empress in his button-hole; and a medal was struck, and an arch erected in honour of his having stayed a plague at Moscow in 1771. Yet by this time the minion, in his pampered insolence, was bringing about his own disgrace. The proposal of Catherine to marry him privately would not satisfy him. He would be her acknowledged husband and her associate in the throne, or at least he would be made the king of some such country as Astrakhan. This arrogance gradually estranged the empress, until in 1772 she took advantage of his absence, on an embassy to the Turks, to supplant him by a new favourite. From this time Orloff seems to have been the victim of disappointed ambition. Although honoured with the title of prince, supplied with large grants of money, and latterly re-admitted to the court, he could not tolerate the sight of his successful rival. He sought to forget his chagrin in foreign travel. Madness, however, seized him, and brought him to the grave in 1783. Orloff had by Catherine a son named Bobrinski.