Petersburg Academy of Arts: history, founders, academicians

The decoration of one of the St. Petersburg embankments is a building, the peace of which guard two sphinxes, brought once from a distant Egypt. It houses the Petersburg Academy of Arts, now called the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. It is rightly considered the cradle of Russian fine art, which earned deserved fame throughout the world.

The Birth of the Academy

The Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg was founded by the favorite of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, a prominent Russian statesman and philanthropist of the 18th century Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov (1727-1797). A photo depicting his bust is presented in the article. He belonged to the category of people, rare at all times, who sought to use their high position and wealth for the benefit of Russia. Becoming in 1755 the founder of the Moscow University, which nowadays bears the name of Lomonosov, two years later he initiated the creation of an educational institution designed to train masters in the main types of fine arts.

The Petersburg Academy of Arts, originally housed in his own mansion on Sadovaya Street, began work in 1758. Most of the funding was from Shuvalov's personal funds, because the treasury had insufficient funds for its maintenance. Generous philanthropist not only for his money enrolled from abroad the best teachers, but also gave him the academy he had created a collection of paintings he owned, thus creating a museum and a library.

The first Rector of the Academy

With the early period of the Academy of Arts, as well as the construction of its current building, the name of one more person is connected, which left a notable mark in the history of Russian culture. This is an outstanding Russian architect Alexander Filippovich Kokorinov (1726-1772). Having developed together with Professor JBM Vallen-Delamot the project of the building in which the academy moved from Shuvalov's mansion, he took up the post of director, then professor and rector. The circumstances of his death gave birth to one of the numerous Petersburg legends, known as the "Ghost Academy of Arts." The fact is that according to the surviving data the rector of the academy passed away not as a result of water sickness, as it was stated in the official obituary, but hung himself in her attic.

Possible causes of suicide are two. According to one version, the reason was an unfounded accusation of appropriation of public funds, that is, corruption. Since in those days it was still considered dishonor and disgrace, Alexander Filippovich failed to justify himself, he preferred to die. In another version, the impetus for this step was the reprimand he received from Empress Catherine II, who visited the Academy building and dirty the dress about a freshly painted wall. Since then it is said that the soul of a suicide, without having received rest in the Upper World, is doomed to wander forever in the walls that he once created. His portrait is presented in the article.

Women who entered the history of the Academy

In the Catherine's era appeared the first woman academician of the Petersburg Academy of Arts. She became a student of the French sculptor Etienne Falconet - Marie-Anna Collot, who, together with her teacher, created the famous "Bronze Horseman". It was she who executed the king's head, which became one of his best sculptural portraits.

Admired by her work, the Empress ordered Collo to set a life pension and assign such a high rank. Meanwhile, among a number of modern researchers, there is an opinion that, despite the established version of Marie-Anna Collot, a female academician of the Petersburg Academy of Arts, is the author of not only the head of the Bronze Horseman, but the whole figure of the Tsar, while her teacher only sculpted a horse. However, this does not detract from his merits.

Along the way, it should be noted that another artist, who came from France and was among the best portraitists of her time, deserved the high and honorary title in Russia at the end of the 18th century, Vigee Lebrun. Academician of the Petersburg Academy of Arts - a title awarded only to graduates. Lebrun, however, received an equally loud title of honorary freelance observer, who was awarded at that time by outstanding artists who received education abroad.

The order of education adopted in the XVIII century

The Petersburg Academy of Arts has played a key role in the development of Russian culture since its inception. The fact that in the XVIII century the training lasted for fifteen years can testify to how seriously the work was put in it, and the best graduates were sent for a public account for an internship abroad. Among the sections of art studied at the academy were painting, graphics, sculpture and architecture.

The entire course of study, which was provided to its students by the Academy of Arts, was divided into five classes, or sections, of which the fourth and fifth were inferior and were called the Educational School. They accepted boys who reached the age of five or six, where they learned to read and write, and also acquired basic skills, drawing ornaments and copying finished images. In each of these two primary classes, training lasted for three years. Thus, the course of the Educational School lasted six years.

Sections from the third to the first were the highest, they were considered, in fact, the Academy of Arts. In them, students previously trained in a single group, were divided into classes according to future specialization - painting, engraving, sculpture or architecture. In each of these three higher sections we studied for three years, as a result of which the training itself lasted nine years in the Academy itself, and together with six years spent at the Educational School, it was fifteen years. Only much later, in the XIX century, after the Educational School was closed in 1843, the term of education was significantly reduced.

Other disciplines

The Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, on the model of similar European educational institutions, produced from its walls not only professionally trained specialists in various fields of art, but also widely educated people. In addition to basic disciplines, the curriculum also included foreign languages, history, geography, mythology and even astronomy.

In the new century

The St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in the 19th century was further developed. The head of the wealthy Russian philanthropist Count Alexander Sergeevich Stroganov conducted a number of reforms, as a result of which restoration and medal classes were created, and serfs were allowed to study under certain conditions. An important stage in the life of the Academy of that period was its transfer first to the Ministry of Public Education, and then to the Ministry of the Imperial Court. This in many ways contributed to obtaining additional funding and allowed more graduates to go abroad.

In the power of classicism

Practically throughout the entire 19th century, the only artistic style recognized in the academy was classicism. The priorities of teaching at that time were greatly influenced by the so-called hierarchy of genres - the system of the division of genres of fine arts, adopted by the Paris Academy of Fine Arts, by their importance, the main one of which was historical painting. This principle existed until the end of the XIX century.

Accordingly, students were required to write pictures on subjects taken from the Holy Scriptures or from works of ancient authors - Homer, Ovid, Theocritus, etc. Old Russian themes were also allowed, but only in the context of the historical works of M. Lomonosov and M. Scherbatov, and Also Synopsis - a collection of works of ancient chroniclers. As a result, classicism, which was preached by the Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts, inevitably limited the creativity of students, driving it into the narrow framework of obsolete dogmas.

Artists, rebels, glorified Russian art

The gradual liberation from the established canons began with the fact that in November 1863 14 of the most gifted students included in the number of participants in the competition for a gold medal refused to paint pictures on the plot given by him from Scandinavian mythology, demanding the right to choose the topic. Having been refused, they defiantly left the academy, organizing a community that became the basis for the establishment later of the famous Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. This event entered the history of Russian art as a riot of fourteen.

Graduates and academicians of the Petersburg Academy of Arts became such famous painters as M.A. Vrubel, VA Serov, VI Surikov, VD Polenov, VM Vasnetsov and many others. Along with them, one should also mention a pleiad of brilliant teachers, among them VE Makovsky, II Shishkin, AI Kuindzhi and IE Repin.

Academy in the XX century

The Petersburg Academy of Arts continued its activities until the October 1917 coup. Six months after the Bolsheviks came to power, it was abolished by the decision of the Council of People's Commissars, and various art educational establishments designed to train the masters of the new socialist art began to be created and periodically changed on its basis. In 1944, the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, housed within its walls, was named after Repin, which he still wears. The very founders of the Academy of Arts - Chamberlain of the Imperial Court II Shuvalov and the outstanding Russian architect AFKokorinov, have forever entered the history of Russian art.