Terrible tsarinas

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Terrible Tsarinas the students in the Cadet Academy, this Adonis was called up to serve in the army. He was brought back to St. Petersburg, where he could again be placed before Her Majesty, but it was no use.

The Shuvalov clan made short work of him. Out of pure friendship, they recommended a certain face cream to him; and, when Beketov tried it, red spots broke out on his face and he was smitten with a high fever. In his delusion, he made indecent comments about Her Majesty. He was driven out the palace and never managed to set foot there again, leaving the way clear for Ivan Shuvalov and Alexis Razumovsky, who both accepted and respected each other.

Under their combined influence, the tsarina gave way to her passion for building, seeking to prove herself a worthy heir to Peter the Great by embellishing his city, St. Petersburg. She spared no expense in renovating the Winter Palace, and in three years she had a summer palace built at Tsarskoye Selo, which would become her favorite residence. The chief architect of all these enormous projects, the Italian Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli, also erected a church at Peterhof and designed the park surrounding the palace, as well as the gardens of Tsarskoye Selo. To compete with Louis XV (whom she took as her model in the art of royal ostentation), Elizabeth turned to the highly regarded European painters of the day, commissioning them to bequeath to the curiosity of the future generations the portraits of Her Majesty and her close friends. After the court painter Caravaque, she invited the very famous Jean-Marc Nattier to come from France.

But he changed his mind at the last minute, and she had to settle for his son-in-law, Louis Tocque, who was won over by an offer of 26,000 rubles from Ivan Shuvalov. In two years, Tocque painted ten canvases and, at the end of his contract, passed the brush to Louis-Joseph Le Lorraine and to Louis-Jean-Francois Lagrenee.2 All these artists were chosen, advised and appointed by Ivan Shu«184»

Elizabethan Russia valov - he performed his best services for the glory of his imperial mistress by attracting to St. Petersburg such talented foreign painters and architects.

Elizabeth felt it was her duty to enrich the capital with beautiful buildings and to embellish the royal apartments with paintings worthy of the galleries of Versailles; at the same time, she had the ambition (although she seldom opened a book) to initiate her compatriots to the delights of the mind. She spoke French rather well and even tried to write verse in that language (as was the rage in all the European courts), but it soon became clear that that pastime was beyond her abilities. On the other hand, she encouraged a proliferation of ballet performances, on the premise that such shows are, at least, an amusing way to participate in the general culture. Most of the ballets were directed by her dance master, Landet. Even more than these theatrical evenings, the innumerable balls served as an occasion for the women to exhibit their most elegant ensembles. But, at these gatherings, they hardly spoke - neither among themselves nor with the male guests. Social mores were still exceedingly conservative; indeed, mixed-gender events were still something of a novelty in this God-fearing world. The ladies, mute and stiff, would line up along one side of the room, their eyes lowered, not looking at the gentlemen aligned on the other side. Later on, the swirling couples also displayed a numbing decency and slowness. “The repetitious and always uniform attendance of these pleasures quickly becomes tiresome,” would write the sharp-tongued Chevalier d’Eon. Similarly, the Marquis de l’Hopital told his minister, the duke of Choiseul: “I won’t even mention the boredom; it is inexpressible!”

Elizabeth tried to shake some life into these events by encouraging the first theater performances in the history of Russia.

She authorized the installation of a company of French actors in St. Petersburg, while the Senate granted the Hilferding Germans