Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli
Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.
Russians quickly gave Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli a russified name of his own – Varfolomei Varfolomeevich. He’d arrived in Russia with his father Carlo – who had been invited into the service of Tsar Peter I. Carlo Rastrelli was a famous builder, bell-maker and sculptor.
Francesco Rastrelli arrived in St Petersburg at the age of 16, and was astounded. The scale of what was being built in these northern marshes outdid anything else in Europe. He went back to Europe to study for five years – but he realised he’d arrived in the right place at the right time. His brilliance lay in being able to deliver, as a foreigner, what the soul of his Russian patrons so deeply desired in Russia in the sphere of architecture.
Rastrelli’s limitless energies went into creating sumptuous designs that still remained faithful to the traditions of Italian baroque. His most famous projects include the Winter Palace, the Smolny Convent complex, and the Palaces of Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo. In total he built or contributed to 185 different building projects.
But in the latter half of the C18th the fussy and elaborate baroque style went out of fashion, and Rastrelli found himself out of favour. In fact he had no work whatsoever. Empress Catherine II preferred the new rococo style and didn’t need him – but she agreed to grant him a pension of one thousand roubles annually, and accepted his resignation as Court Architect. But Rastrelli hated sitting about, so instead he went into business importing paintings from Italy, and selling them.
Rastrelli’s interiors designed for the Winter Palace were almost entirely consumed in the flames of the great Palace Fire of 1837. The only thing remaining was the Great Staircase (also called the Jordan Staircase).
An elderly Rastrelli later wrote: “Russia only bothers about architects at the moment it actually needs their help”.
Although Rastrelli didn’t die a pauper, he was so quickly forgotten that the archives don’t even give any indication where he is buried.
File:Rastrelli commons.wikimedia.org
Автор:Lucas Conrad Pfanzelt commons.wikimedia.org
Лицензия:commons.wikimedia.org
Francesco Rastrelli arrived in St Petersburg at the age of 16, and was astounded. The scale of what was being built in these northern marshes outdid anything else in Europe. He went back to Europe to study for five years – but he realised he’d arrived in the right place at the right time. His brilliance lay in being able to deliver, as a foreigner, what the soul of his Russian patrons so deeply desired in Russia in the sphere of architecture.
Rastrelli’s limitless energies went into creating sumptuous designs that still remained faithful to the traditions of Italian baroque. His most famous projects include the Winter Palace, the Smolny Convent complex, and the Palaces of Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo. In total he built or contributed to 185 different building projects.
But in the latter half of the C18th the fussy and elaborate baroque style went out of fashion, and Rastrelli found himself out of favour. In fact he had no work whatsoever. Empress Catherine II preferred the new rococo style and didn’t need him – but she agreed to grant him a pension of one thousand roubles annually, and accepted his resignation as Court Architect. But Rastrelli hated sitting about, so instead he went into business importing paintings from Italy, and selling them.
Rastrelli’s interiors designed for the Winter Palace were almost entirely consumed in the flames of the great Palace Fire of 1837. The only thing remaining was the Great Staircase (also called the Jordan Staircase).
An elderly Rastrelli later wrote: “Russia only bothers about architects at the moment it actually needs their help”.
Although Rastrelli didn’t die a pauper, he was so quickly forgotten that the archives don’t even give any indication where he is buried.
File:Rastrelli commons.wikimedia.org
Автор:Lucas Conrad Pfanzelt commons.wikimedia.org
Лицензия:commons.wikimedia.org
Descargue la app gratuita de izi.TRAVEL
¡Cree sus propias audioguías!
La utilización del sistema y la app de guía para móvil es gratuita
