Member of the Imperial Academy of Arts He was born a serf; belonging to Count Nikolay Rumyantsev.

While participating in the hunts at Gomel Palace, young Sazonov would make sketches.

He studied under the history painter Grigory Ugryumov and showed such rapid progress that the Count gave him his freedom.

Later, he painted an iconostasis for the newly rebuilt Transfiguration Cathedral and created decorations for the Tauride Palace.

[3] For the next twelve years, he received numerous commissions for religious paintings in Saint Petersburg's churches, interrupted by the occasional portrait.