Peter the Great Part Two

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	The advent of Peter the Great and Petersburg

	Part Two: Architecture of St. Petersburg after 1725
Click Image for Full View	Approach to Peterhof. Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli was the chief architect for Elizaveta Petrovna, the daughter of Peter the Great. In 1741, she decided to enlarge the palace at Peterhof. Peterhof (which means "Peter's Court"in German) was founded under Peter the Great, and was the first of the great Imperial palatial ensembles outside the city. Under Empress Elizabeth, court life had become more opulent, and so Rastrelli was given the task of designing a palace that could accommodate Elizabeth's growing crowd of followers. Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999
Click Image for Full View	Grand Cascade at Peterhof Besides the palace itself, visitors to Peterhof are impressed by the Grand Cascade and the ensemble of fountains and statues. The design of Peterhof takes into account the distribution of water as an element that enhances the architecture. This aquatic emphasis reflects one of Peter's goals: access to and management of water through his Baltic outlet. The hydraulic engineering created for Peterhof was one of the most complex ensembles of fountains, cascades, and decorative ponds in Europe. This proclaimed the resources and might of Russia's transformed autocracy. Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999
Click Image for Full View	Gilded Statue of Samson One could argue that these elaborate hydraulic installations are an imitation of Versailles. At the same time, certain statues at Peterhof make symbolic reference to Peter's triumphs over his enemies and over the natural elements. This gilded statue of Samson forcing open the jaws of the lion, for example, is an allegory for Peter's victory over Charles XII. The lion is the heraldic beast of Sweden and the decisive battle at Poltava took place on St. Samson's day (June 27) in 1709. Besides this very specific allegory, the force of water channeled through the statues is symbolic of Peter's reshaping of the elements in the very building of his city. Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999
Click Image for Full View	*Great Palace at Peterhof.* The yellow, white, and gold Great Palace above the Grand Cascade is far removed from that one originally designed for Peter by LeBlond in 1714-21. In 1745, Rastrelli was commissioned to rebuild the main palace at Peterhof (the basic structural work was completed in 1752, although decoration continued until 1755). Rastrelli added a third story and two wings terminating in pavilions, although his design adhered to the spirit of LeBlond's early baroque. The central structure, with its mansard roof, especially followed the original form of the exterior. (A mansard roof has two slopes on each of its four sides, the lower steeper than upper). Also, the use of ornamentation is rather restrained, compared with Rastrelli's later works. Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999
Click Image for Full View	Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. If the simplicity of the main palace at Peterhof represents Rastrelli's homage to an earlier form of the Russian baroque, his later palaces express the spirit of Elizabeth's reign: an extravagant design, but yet ordered by a rhythmic placement of columns and statues.
Click Image for Full View	*Center portion of facade, Catherine Palace.* In 1753 Rastrelli, who, as chief architect to the court, was in charge of all palace construction, took over direct control of work at Tsarskoe Selo. The empress Elizabeth (Peter's daughter by his second wife Catherine, for whom the palace was named) intended to make the Catherine Palace the main imperial residence outside of Petersburg. When completed, the palace was, in a word, opulent. One English traveler to Russia called it "The completest triumph of barbarous taste I have seen in these northern kingdoms." The exterior, in fact, was originally even more extravagant than seen here, as much of the gilt was removed from the exterior by Catherine the Great. The palace is of disproportionate length, but the columns and windows create an effect of symmetry. Despite the symmetry of the facade, the culminating point is not the central structure, but rather the five-domed church that anchors the east wing of the palace. The design of this church anticipates Rastrelli's union of baroque and Russian Orthodox Church architecture in the Smolny Convent.
Click Image for Full View	Green dining room inside Catherine Palace. The decoration in this interior shot of the palace dates from the time of another Catherine--the Great. Catherine the Great was the first Russian monarch to make a clear break between her public and private lives. She commissioned a Scottish architect by the name of Charles Cameron to design a series of rooms where she could live in privacy, and on a scale befitting a noble lady rather than a monarch. This Green Dining Room is an example of the neoclassical style in Russian architecture through its stucco reliefs in the Wedgwood manner.
Click Image for Full View	*Winter Palace.* Rastrelli, 1754-1762. View from Palace Square. This was the last of Rastrelli's imperial residences, and one of the last major Baroque buildings in Europe. It cost some 2.5 million rubles to build, with funds drawn from taxes on alcohol and salt. The Winter Palace remains a great expression of imperial Russian architecture and of the autocratic state that willed it into being. Authority is connoted by the very scale of the building, whose horizontal lines are segmented by the repetition of the columns and statues. The Winter Palace represents the quintessence of St. Petersburg monumental style, an assimilation of Western principles applied in a manner and scale that were uniquely Russian. Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999
Click Image for Full View	*Smolny* The culmination of Rastrelli's work was his design for the Cathedral of the Resurrection at the Newmaiden Convent--commonly known as Smolny--from the Russian for "tar" because of its location near the site where tar had been stored for Peter's Navy. Elizabeth wished to found a convent suitably removed from the city--past participants of the Dartmouth FSP can attest to its distance from Nevsky Prospect. In 1764 Catherine the Great converted it to a boarding school for daughters of the nobility. The center of the compound was occupied by the cathedral which Empress Elizabeth specified to be built along the lines of the Dormition cathedral in Moscow: a five domed church. After the severe look of Peter the Great's Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul, the reign of Elizabeth marks the resurgence of the traditional Russian Orthodox plan for church architecture, although modified by Western influence. Construction proceeded slowly and the Smolny convent was never completed as Rastrelli or Elizabeth had intended. Rastrelli's design for the cathedral's exterior, however, reveals how ingeniously he fused eastern and western elements. The tightly integrated, monolithic mass of the central and four side domes is related to two of the greatest medieval Russian monuments: the Kremlin Dormition Cathedral and the Novgorod St. Sophia. Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999
Click Image for Full View	Academy of Fine Arts. By V. de la Mothe and Kokorinov, 1765-72. When compared with the works of Rastrelli, this design for the Academy of Fine Arts is the essence of simplicity, without statues or plaster ornamentation. Hamilton discusses this building, which seems dignified in contrast to the clumsiness of the Kunstkamera, in terms of the growing sophistication of Russian architecture.
Click Image for Full View	*The Marble Palace.* By Antonio Rinaldi, built 1768-85. This Marble Palace gets its name from its veneer of red granite and Siberian marble. It epitomizes the final stage of Petersburg's transition from the baroque to the neoclassical. Like the Winter Palace, the Marble Palace is visually divided into two levels, but unlike it, the pilasters do not reach all the way to the ground. The facades are designed with rigorous symmetry.
Click Image for Full View	*Cathedral of the Virgin of Kazan* Although the Kazan Cathedral was built in the first decade of the reign of Alexander I, it had been planned for Paul, whose spirit pervades it. The Cathedral was dedicated to the icon of the Kazan Mother of God. Another inspiration for the cathedral was the Emperor Paul's belief that he could reunite Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. As a bastion of united Christianity, Petersburg would have a new cathedral to rival St. Peter's in Rome.
Click Image for Full View	*New Admiralty.* By A.D. Zakharov, built 1806-23. Tsar Alexander I contributed the most to the look of Petersburg's historical center. He promoted a consistent building program for the city and the greatest works of his architecture were government structures or city-planning projects. The New Admiralty is the high-water mark of Alexandrian Classicism. Its golden spire is a visual counterpoint for the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral across the Neva. Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999
Click Image for Full View	*General Staff buildings and Alexander Column.* The last of Alexander's projects was the design of Winter Palace Square, entrusted to a Russian of Italian origin: Karl Rossi. Rossi built a huge triangular building for the General Staff with a concave curved facade embracing the south side of the square. The Palace Square facade of the General Staff building forms a perfect complement to the baroque of Rastrelli's Winter Palace. Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999
Click Image for Full View	*General Staff Arch.* The contour and arches impose order over a vast urban terrain, but also channel movement within that space.
Click Image for Full View	*Moscow Gate.* By V.P. Stasov, built 1834-38. Alexander's younger brother Nicholas I, who took the throne in 1825, was extremely militaristic in outlook. The sense of imperial authority received its fullest artistic expression in the Moscow Gate, erected on the outskirts of St. Petersburg to commemorate Nicholas's victories against the Persians, Turks, and Poles during the first decade of his reign. It was built by the Russian Stasov, but modeled on Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.
Click Image for Full View	*Alexander Column.* Built by R. de Montferrand, 1829. Nicholas had the column built in recognition of Alexander's victory over Napoleon. Hamilton certainly does not hide his opinion of the monument when he writes "the huge column, apart from its impressive height, is graceless in its proportions, another indication of Montferrand's fundamental lack of taste" (333). The granite monolith is the largest in the world, and its placement in the square is considered one of the engineering triumphs of the century. Photo by William P. Tishler, 1999
Click Image for Full View	*St. Isaac's Cathedral, 1817-1857.* Another Orthodox church in the classical style, designed by Montferrand. The church as it was constructed has the authoritarian character demanded by Tsar Nicholas I.
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