Elizabethan Baroque
Rastrelli's lavish court Baroque: turquoise-and-white palaces with gilding on Russian soil
How to recognise it
- turquoise or blue walls, white columns
- long façades with clustered paired columns
- gilded capitals, masks and garlands
- five-domed churches in Baroque dress
- mirrored enfilades with gilded carving
Why it emerged
Empress Elizabeth wanted her court to outshine any in Europe and spent freely. Her chief architect Rastrelli fused Italian and Central European Baroque with the Russian taste for colour and five-domed churches.
Examples
Winter Palace1754–1762 · Francesco Bartolomeo RastrelliChief imperial residence until 1917, now the Hermitage; focal point of 1905 and October 1917
Catherine Palace1752–1756 · Francesco Bartolomeo RastrelliA façade over 300 m long with gilded atlantes; home of the Amber Room
Smolny Convent1748–1764 · Francesco Bartolomeo RastrelliRastrelli dressed the Russian five-dome plan in Baroque ornament, an emblem of the style
St Andrew's Church, Kyiv1747–1754 · Francesco Bartolomeo RastrelliSt Petersburg court Baroque transplanted onto a steep hill above the DnieperMore in this style
- c. 1745–1755 Grand Peterhof Palace — Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli
Meanwhile elsewhere
- Ife and Benin bronzes Africa
- Ming and Qing Porcelain Asia
- Mughal Art Asia
- Baroque Europe
- Latin American Baroque Americas
- Ukiyo-e Asia
- Rococo Europe
- Neoclassicism Europe