Product Code Database
Petrine Baroque (Russian: Петровское барокко) is a style of 17th and 18th century Baroque architecture and decoration favoured by Peter the Great and employed to design buildings in the newly founded Russia capital, Saint Petersburg, under this monarch and his immediate successors.
Different from contemporary Naryshkin Baroque, favoured in Moscow, the Petrine Baroque represented a dramatic departure from Byzantine Empire traditions that had dominated Russian architecture for almost a millennium. Its chief practitioners - Domenico Trezzini, Andreas Schlüter, and Mikhail Zemtsov - drew inspiration from a rather modest Dutch, Danish, and Swedish architecture of the time.
The Petrine Baroque structures outside St. Petersburg are scarce; they include the Menshikov Tower in Moscow and Kadriorg Palace in Tallinn
Peter's original goal for St. Petersburg was to re-create the city of Amsterdam. As the city began construction, Peter started making changes to the designs of the buildings, often altering the planned appearance of buildings once their construction had already started. These last minute alterations led to buildings not belonging to one particular architectural school.Brumfield, William Craft (1983). "Saint Petersburg: The Imperial Design". Gold in Azure: One Thousand Years of Russian Architecture. Boston, Mass.: D.R. Godine. p. 238. .
The Russian history scholar James Cracraft suggests that the clearest example of Dutch architecture designed under Peter's rule was his Summer Palace in St. Petersburg, while there was also Monplaisir Palace, also known as the "Little Dutch House". In a 1724 letter to the architectural student Ivan Korobov, Peter discusses his preference for the ornamentation of Dutch Baroque. In this same letter, Peter conveys his disinterest for the architectural styles of the French and Italian due to its lack of adornment and use of stone rather than brick. Among Peter's papers, a note was found describing how he sent two Russian architecture students to Holland so that they could learn the Dutch Baroque style and come back to build churches and houses for St. Petersburg. In addition to having Russian students train abroad, Peter also hired Dutch architects to come and work on projects in Russia.
Some of Trezzini's major additions to the city include: Peter the Great's Summer Palace, the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the Twelve Collegia, and the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral. Trezzini and his team designed the layout of the developing St. Petersburg including the streets of the anticipated city center of Vasilyevsky Island. The layout of the city was arranged in a grid format with perpendicular streets and canals. Trezzini's design of the city did not follow the European ideal at the time because of its lack of compactness and grid organization rather than the traditional ringed layout. In 1714, Peter declared that all houses in St. Petersburg should be constructed after Trezzini's model home. Different versions of the home were created for different classes of citizens based on their rank. Peter classified all citizens into 14 different classes, all of which had different residential areas in Trezzini plan. The size of the citizen's home directly corresponded to their standing in this social ranking. The lower classes were divided by their trades and the upper classes were divided by the amount of Serfdom that they controlled. Several engravings of the model homes exist and while they are often accredited to Trezzini himself, his assistant Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond is responsible for creating them. These plans dictated the ornamentation style of the homes and the materials that they would be built with belonging to each class of citizens. In the city center proper, these guidelines were adhered to strictly. The further from the city center, the more flexibility with the design of homes there was. Despite the effort put into maintaining a regulated city design, after Peter's death, the system that Trezzini designed fell to the wayside. Scholars consider Peter I's comprehensive urban design to be one of his greatest legacies.
In the design of his buildings, the Dutch Baroque style is visible in the types of ornamentation he preferred. For columns, Trezzini preferred squared as a decorative element and restricted their use to where they were structurally necessary or served a major purpose in the overall design. Trezzini also took inspiration from the work of Christopher Wren, whose work on the St Paul's Cathedral appears in Trezzini's sketches.
Trezzini established the St. Petersburg Chancellery of Construction and became its first director. This school was the first institution to offer formal training for architects in Russia. Among those who trained at the Chancellery was Mikhail Zemtsov who continued Trezzini's legacy. Other architects whom Trezzini worked alongside during his life and continued the construction of his buildings after his death were Carlo Giuseppe and Pietro Antonio Trezzini.
| +Examples of Trezzini's architectural contributions ! ! ! ! ! |
| +Examples of Zemtsov's architectural contributions ! by Mikhail Zemtsov]] |
| + Examples of Rastrelli's architectural contributions ! ! ! |
| + Examples of Mattarnovi's architectural contributions ! museum by Georg Johann Mattarnovi]] |
|
|
