Italian, active in Russia · Baroque · Elizabethan Baroque
Bartolomeo Rastrelli
b. 1700, Paris — d. 29 April 1771
Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–1771) was the Italian architect of Russia's Late Baroque, designer of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo and Smolny Cathedral.
Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli was the court architect who gave imperial Russia its most extravagant Baroque buildings. The turquoise-and-white Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, now the main building of the Hermitage, and the gilded Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo are his.
Life
Rastrelli was born in Paris in 1700, where his father, the Florentine sculptor Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli, was working. In 1716 father and son moved to the new Russian capital of Saint Petersburg, and the young man trained in his father's workshop. His first important commission came in 1721, a palace for Prince Dimitrie Cantemir. He became senior court architect in 1730 and held the post under the Empresses Anna and Elizabeth.
Catherine the Great, who took the throne in 1762, preferred the new Neoclassicism, and Rastrelli lost favor. He retired to Courland (in present-day Latvia) to finish ducal palaces there, and was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts a few months before his death in 1771.
Style
Rastrelli combined the Italian and Central European Late Baroque with older Muscovite traditions such as onion domes and five-domed church plans. His façades are long and rhythmic, broken by clustered columns, with sculpture and gilding along the roofline, and colored stucco walls set off by white details. Interiors were all mirrors, gilded carving and parquet. The style is so closely tied to his patron that it is often called Elizabethan Baroque.
Key buildings
His major works, almost all from 1744–62, include the Winter Palace (1754–62), the rebuilt Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, the Grand Palace at Peterhof, the Smolny Convent and Cathedral, the Stroganov and Vorontsov palaces in Saint Petersburg, St Andrew's Church in Kyiv, and Rundāle and Jelgava palaces in Courland.
A note on attribution
Our catalogue includes the Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God at Bykovo, which older descriptions credit to Rastrelli. That cannot be right: the church was built in 1788–89, years after his death, and its Gothic Revival style is far from his. It is usually attributed to Vasily Bazhenov.
For the wider style see Baroque art.
Questions & answers
What buildings did Rastrelli design?
Rastrelli designed the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, the Smolny Cathedral, the Stroganov Palace, the expansion of Peterhof's Grand Palace, St Andrew's Church in Kyiv and Rundāle Palace in Latvia.
Did Rastrelli design the Bykovo church of the Vladimir Icon?
No. The church at Bykovo was built in 1788–89, after Rastrelli died in 1771, in a Gothic Revival style unlike his. It is generally attributed to Vasily Bazhenov, though no document confirms the architect.
What is Elizabethan Baroque?
It is the name for the lavish Late Baroque style of Empress Elizabeth's reign (1741–62), largely created by Rastrelli. It features long colored façades, white columns, gilded sculpture and mirrored interiors.