It was individuals like Trediakovskii and Lomonosov who laid the groundwork for professional literary culture by absorbing and experimenting with Western literary genres and acquiring foreign languages. They were pioneers of literary theory and poetic metre, advocating and demonstrating the use of syllabo-tonic versification, which ousted syllabic verse.49 Trediakovskii's A Method for Composing Russian Verse (1752) summarised the achievements of the reform. Lomonosov's influential work On the Usefulness of the Church Books (1757) promoted the use of three styles or registers of literary language: the higher the style, the more Church Slavonic included, the lower, the more vernacular. Even so, a Russian literary language easily comprehensible to today's readers took several more decades to evolve. The readership for new works expanded with the growth of educational institutions, such as the St Petersburg Cadet Corps for noblemen, founded in 1731. Literary circles developed along with literary journals, for example, Lomonosov's Monthly Compositions (1755).
In the i740s-50s Russians began to write seriously for the theatre, which was revived after the failures of earlier experiments. In 1747 'Russia's Racine', Alek- sandr Sumarokov (i7i7-77), wrote Khorev, the first Russian classical tragedy, which warned against tyranny, excessive favouritism and succumbing to passions. It played alongside an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1748) in Sumarokov's translation, which was followed by three more neoclassical tragedies based on Racine and Corneille. In 1750 the court repertoire featured eighteen French comedies, fourteen Russian tragedies and comedies, four Italian and German interludes. In i756 Elizabeth appointed Sumarokov as the first director of the Imperial Theatre, which was based in a professional company of Russian actors under the direction of the actor-manager Fedor Volkov (1729-63).
48 See note 26 above.
49 Jones, 'Literature', p. 28.
The developments reviewed so far were overwhelmingly for the court and the nobility. Beyond these circles literacy rates remained low, opportunities for schooling few. And as long as nobles continued to be bound to the crown by service, even their scope for independent cultural activity were limited. The most notable act of the last ruler of this period, Peter III, who himself played the violin and enjoyed the theatre, was to free the nobility from compulsory service. In so doing, he unwittingly released time and energies that allowed hundreds of Russian nobles to travel abroad and also promoted the blossoming of noble culture in the Russian provinces, creating a so-called 'golden age' that continued into the first decades of the nineteenth century.
Catherine the Great: i762-i796
To quote from Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom she once sent an expensive snuffbox, Catherine II was 'a sovereign to whom all the Poets, Philosophes and Artists of the time have done homage'.[42] Catherine had a passion for architecture and landscape gardening; she was an indefatigable author, of plays as well as legislation, and an insatiable collector.[43] Among her tally of acquisitions were approximately 4,000 Old Masters, which included 225 paintings offered to Catherine after Frederick the Great could not afford to buy them and the eight Rembrandts, six Van Dycks, three Rubens and one Raphael in the Pierre Crozat collection. Catherine also bought coins and medals, objets de vertu, applied art and porcelain, of which one of the most spectacular examples was the 944-piece Green Frog Service, 1773-4 by Josiah Wedgwood, featuring British scenes.
Like most European monarchs of her time, Catherine embraced neoclas- sicism in architecture. Space and proportion, not ornament, were the watchwords and Rastrelli's baroque did not outlive Elizabeth. A fine example of Russian neoclassical architecture is the Tauride palace, built in 1783-9 by the architect Ivan Starov (1745-1808) for Catherine's favourite, Grigorii Potemkin, himself a lavish patron of the arts.[44] The interior was sumptuously decorated, but the exterior was modestly plain, redolent of'antique elegance'. One of Catherine's favourite architects and designers, the Scot Charles Cameron (1746-1812), built her a gallery addition to the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo in the shape of a Greek temple for the display of her collection of antique busts. Nearby Pavlovsk, a summer residence built by Cameron in 1782-6 for Grand Duke Paul and his wife, was set in a picturesquely landscaped park dotted with Greek temples and rotundas. The main palace reflected the popularity in Russia of the Palladian style.[45] Another of Catherine's favourite architects was Giacomo Quarenghi (1744-1817), who surmounted his Academy of Sciences (1783-9) with the plainest of porticoes. Inspired by British examples, Catherine's tastes also extended to neo-Gothic details applied to classical proportions, as, for example, in the church and palace at Chesme (by G.-F. Velden [Felten], 1770s). However, the Gothic palace at Tsaritsyno designed by Vasilii Bazhenov (1737-99) was not completed.
Neoclassical principles were not only applied to Catherine's personal projects. Restructuring the built environment was part of her plan to inculcate civic pride in her subjects, and classical St Petersburg stamped a more or less uniform blueprint over the empire, giving visual expression to notions of antique harmony and order. A planning model devised in 1763 by the Commission of Masonry Construction for the reconstruction of Tver was adapted for other towns. It incorporated columned trading arcades around a central square with a radiating street plan. Subsequently, each town designated as a 'capital' in the Provincial Statute of 1775 was supposed to build a governor's or chief official's house and other civic buildings. In Moscow the new premises for the university (1782-93) and the Noble Assembly (1793-1801) by Matvei Kazakov (1738-1813) underlined the city's role as a centre of learning and the nobility's participation in the empress's projects.
Nobles began to transform pockets of the Russian landscape on the basis of these new ideals. Gracious private dwellings sprang up, still often built of wood, but of a regular classical design.[46] Landscaped gardens in the 'natural' English style were popular, with artificial water features and temples to Friendship and the Muses. Such landscapes suggested historical, allegorical and philosophical themes for strollers to enjoy and contemplate. On the grander country estates serfs contributed to the upsurge of cultural life outside the capital. Some performed collectively in choirs, theatrical and dance troupes or horn bands, while individuals who showed promise were trained as actors, master craftsmen, painters and architects. The estates at Kuskovo and Ostank- ino outside Moscow, for example, both owned by members of the wealthy Sheremetev clan, were built and furnished by serfs, including several generations of Argunovs.
The Academy of Arts would remain the virtually unchallenged centre and arbiter of the figurative arts in Russia until the middle of the nineteenth century. In i764 a charter placed the academy directly under the sovereign's patronage and in the same year its grand new neoclassical building, the first in St Petersburg, was begun. Foreign artists continued to play a prominent role in court portraiture - the Danish artist Vigilius Eriksen and the Swede Alexander Roslin, for example, left striking portraits of Empress Catherine - but local artists competed with them. The first Russian professor of history painting was Anton Losenko (1737-73). His Vladimir and Rogneda (1770) was the first Russian history painting on a national theme, while Hector Taking Leave of Andromache (1773) treats a classical subject, emphasising the virtues of civic duty and moral heroism.[47]
42
Quoted in Simon Dixon,
43
On architecture and gardens, see A. G. Cross, 'Catherine the Great and the English Garden', in J. Norman (ed.),
44
See Simon Sebag Montfiore,
45
See D. O. Shvidkovskii,
46
See Priscilla Roosevelt,
47
There are no major studies of later eighteenth-century Russian painting in English. For information on artists mentioned here, see Alan Bird,