Russians in Europe.
Amongst the documents surviving from the 17th century are a handful of travel diaries and note-books belonging to members of the Russian elite. One of these is P. A. Tolstoy (1645-1729, later Count) above who with great perception and delight indulged his curiosity about art, buildings and music as he travelled through Poland, Austria and Italy between 1697-99 on a diplomatic mission. Sitting in a catholic church in Minsk, Belorussia, Tolstoy was seduced by music and art before he even got to baroque Rome which overwhelmed him with its churches, art, atmosphere and music. As Cracraft says, with such documents we see how the Russian elite began to be captivated by art, and they sensed that their own art was hugely inferior to that of Italy, the Netherlands and other European regions. A few years after Tolstoy’s diplomatic peregrinations, Russian artists and diplomats at Peter’s direction began to trek westwards, taking residence in Vienna, Rome, the Hague, Berlin, Paris and London. Matveev worked under Carel de Moor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and spent eleven years in the Netherlands. He was the first Russian artist wholly taught outside the country. In 1727, Matveev returned home, where he became the Chief Artist at the Court in Saint Petersburg. Amongst the first Russian painters to study in Italy were Fedor Cherkasov, Mikhail Zakharov and the Nikitin brothers. Ivan Nikitin (d 1741) along with his brother Roman were sent to Venice and Florence by Peter the Great who learned with approval that “they were not wasting their time” in Venice and were “learning Italian well.” Ivan’s early portraits show the influence of the parsuna (no perspective, strict local colours, no backgrounds) but all that disappears in his later portraits which veer towards the baroque. Sadly, after Peter’s death Ivan’s fortunes would decline in more than one sense- he found it hard to get commissions, found himself out of favour and was exiled to Siberia in 1737.
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