St. Petersburg through Venetian Eyes: An Episode in Late Eighteenth-Century Book Illustration

Roy, Emily

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/122728 Copy

Description

Title

St. Petersburg through Venetian Eyes: An Episode in Late Eighteenth-Century Book Illustration

Author(s)

Roy, Emily

Issue Date

2024-01

Keyword(s)

• St. Petersburg
• Venice
• print culture
• book Illustration
• publishing
• Peter the Great
• Catherine II
• Novelli

Abstract

This article analyzes a print that was published in Venice in 1797 as the opening image to a biography of Catherine II. Certainly prepared during the empress’s life, the publication appeared just months after her death in a watershed year for Europe which saw the fall of the Republic of Venice. The print imagines the moment that Peter the Great founded the new city of St. Petersburg over ninety years earlier. Through an exploration of the carefully constructed messages in the print, this paper examines the legacy of the image of Peter in Western Europe against which Catherine was understood. It considers the imagery of St. Petersburg in relation to Venice: the capitals of two empires, one in its ascendency and one at the point of collapse.

Series/Report Name or Number

ВИВЛIОθИКА: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, vol. 11

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.vivliofika.v11.1424

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2023 Emily Roy
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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