THE ACTIVITIES OF FRANCESCO BARTOLOMEO RASTRELLI AS REFLECTED IN LATVIAN ART HISTORY (Francesko Bartolomeo Rastrelli darbiba Latvija makslas vestures atspogulojuma)

• Authors: Lancmanis Imants
• Languages of publication: LV

Abstracts

EN

The Italian architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli worked both in Russia and in Latvia, but his work has never been researched in any complete way, nor has it gained international recognition. In Latvian art history, however, the reflection of Rastrelli's activities is a vivid example of the way in which ideas about art history can develop with a great proportion of mistakes in fact and interpretation and falsehood in accumulated traditions. The work which Rastrelli did in Kurzeme (Courland) appeared in the historical literature of Latvia quite early, thanks to the publication of an article about the laying of the cornerstone of the Rundale Palace in 1736. Rastrelli's work in Russia was reviewed in a general way for the first time in 1876, in an article by Andrej Petrov. Early in the 20th century, Igor Grabar, a Russian art historian, in his analysis of Rastrelli's work that was based on a fairly high level of knowledge and methodological approach, treated the Rundale and Jelgava palaces critically and in passing. It was during this period of research that mistaken information about the supposed work of the painters Pietro Rotari and Francesco Fontebasso in the palaces of the Courlandian dukes first appeared in public. Thanks to Wilhelm Neumann, these falsehoods were promoted in the artists' lexicon of Thieme-Becker. The work of the painter Friedrich Hartmann Barisien in the palaces of the dukes was misinterpreted, and the sculptor Johann Michael Graff was confused with the painter Anton Graff. Boris Vipper tried to move the analysis of Rastrelli's work in a more original direction in his ‘Latvijas maksla baroka laikmeta' (Latvian art in the Baroque period) in 1937, but he, too, produced a series of errors and unjustified conclusions. Art historian Anna Muller-Eschebach's doctoral dissertation in 1939 marked a turning point in the research of buildings which Rastrelli built in Latvia (or which were attributed to him) from the perspective of fact, stylistic analysis, and modem methodologies of the age.

Keywords

EN

FRANCESCO BARTOLOMEO RASTRELLI; LATVIAN ART HISTORY; RUNDALE PALACE

Discipline

• ARTS_&_ARCHITECTURE: ARTS & ARCHITECTURE

• Publisher: Publishing House 'Neputns', Terbatas iela 49/51-8, Riga LV-1011, Latvia; www.neputns.lv
• Journal: Materiali Latvijas makslas vesturei
• Year: 2001
• Volume: 2
• Pages: 47-54
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Lancmanis Imants

• Imants Lancmanis, Rundale Palace Museum, Pilsrundale, Rundale Parish, Rundale District, LV-3921, Latvia

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10LVAAAA088928