Petrine Baroque

Peter the Great wanted Russia to join the family of civilised western nations, following the common European path of political, economic and cultural development. Hoping to see the fruits of his work in his own lifetime, the emperor invited many famous West European architects, sculptors, painters and masters of applied art to his new capital of St Petersburg, founded by the tsar in 1703.

Early Russian or Petrine Baroque (from the Italian word barocco, meaning capricious, overwrought or florid) was a mixture of Italian Baroque, early French Neoclassicism and Rococo, Dutch civil architecture and several other styles and movements. Each architect working in St Petersburg introduced the traditions of his own country and school of architecture. In this sense, Petrine Baroque was not strictly Baroque and is purely a nominal term. This reflects the still unclear tendency of the period, explaining the subsequent evolution of Russian architecture into High Baroque in the mid-eighteenth century.