18th Century

Maltese Rossica

One of the most fascinating episodes in the history of Russia is the establishment of close ties with the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, a religious and military order of the Roman Catholic Church ...

Swiss Rossica

The cultural ties between Russia and Switzerland enjoy a long history, stretching back over three hundred years. In the early eighteenth century, Peter the Great invited Swiss engineers, architects a...

Imperial Russian Jewellery 18th–19th Centuries

For most of the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth century, Russian art was dominated by three main styles – Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassicism. Each trend personified the aesthetic ideals and tast...

Dutch Rossica

From an early age, Peter the Great greatly admired Holland and did all he could to copy the Netherlands. He had a weakness for everything to do with this European nation and, consciously or not, tran...

Sentimentalism

At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the family portrait began to enjoy increasing popularity. Quiet domestic joys and the heartfelt affections of spouses, parents and children wer...

Baroque

Following the Protestant Reformation launched by Martin Luther in 1517 and the advances in science made in the sixteenth century, the papacy and the absolute monarchies of Europe desperately needed t...

Academicism

Before the Imperial Academy of Arts was opened in St Petersburg in 1764, Russian masters received their professional schooling in various institutions, such as the Armoury and the Academy of Sciences...

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism was an artistic reaction against the frivolity and excesses of the Baroque and Rococo periods. As the name suggests, the inspiration for this style largely came from the classical art o...

High Baroque

Although the style had first appeared as Muscovite or Naryshkin Baroque back in the late seventeenth century, the Baroque only really flourished in Russia between the 1740s and early 1760s. The centr...

Petrine Baroque

Peter the Great wanted Russia to follow the common European path of political, economic and cultural development. The emperor invited many West European architects, sculptors, painters and applied ar...

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