Empress Catherine II, a devoted admirer of Voltaire's writings, stimulated his cult in Russia. In response, the philosopher dedicated a poem to her. Catherine's reply, dated October 15, 1763, initiated a correspondence that influenced her on many matters until Voltaire's death in 1778. She spared no expense to secure his library of 7,000 annotated volumes bound in red morocco that include most of his private papers and her own letters to him, most of which have been preserved in the public library of Saint Petersburg.

Catherine II commissioned several portraits of Voltaire. In 1784, the intriguing marble Voltaire Seated in an Armchair arrived from Paris and was ceremoniously installed in a grotto at Czarskoe Selo castle before it was moved to the Hermitage in 1805. This bust from the world-famous Stroganoff collection in Saint Petersburg was presumably acquired by Count Aleksandr Sergeevich Stroganoff directly from Houdon during the count's years in Paris from 1770 to 1779. It was displayed in Saint Petersburg along with Houdon's bust of Denis Diderot (1974.291).

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