RASTRELLI, BARTOLOMEO FRANCESCO. - Architect, son of the famous sculptor Carlo R., born in Paris ca. 1700, died in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) in 1771.

He followed his father to Russia at the age of fifteen, taking part in many of his father's works and enterprises. He completed his artistic education during long stays in France and Italy. During the twenty years of Elizabeth's reign he was, one might say, the designer and coordinator of all the religious and civil buildings of Russia. A profound connoisseur of the Russian national style, he was able to fuse it with the Western Baroque, creating a special style of his own that was called "R. Baroque."

RASTRELLI, BARTOLOMEO FRANCESCO - The complex of the central buildings of the Smolny monastery - St. Petersburg, today Leningrad.(from E. Lo Gatto, L'opera del genio italiano all'estero. Gli artisti in Russia, II, Rome 1933, pl. 77)

His masterpieces are: the Winter Palace, that of Tsarskoye Selo, the Razumovsky, Stroganov and Vorontsov Palaces, the Smolny convent of St. Petersburg, the cathedral of St. Andrew in Kiev. In the Winter Palace one notices the traces of the artist's Roman sojourn in the grandiose and solemn proportions of the building, especially in the two projecting side wings. Very many are the private palaces built by R., famous for their façades adorned with very rich columns and pilasters.

Russian religious architecture also felt the influence of Rastrelli's art, renewing itself in its principal tendencies. R. knew how to draw inspiration from Western churches, while yet preserving for the new Russian cathedrals their traditional and national character, the five cupolas and the other architectural and decorative peculiarities. His masterpiece of this kind was the Smolny convent, built for the purpose of a retreat for spiritual exercises. Important too is the aforementioned cathedral of St. Andrew in Kiev, built in 1744 and consecrated in 1767; surmounted by a cupola with four lanterns, luxuriously decorated within, it is an example of the Baroque transplanted onto Russian soil.

R. marked an epoch in the artistic development of all Russia; in his school many Russian architects were trained, who knew how to continue his work worthily, spreading Western art and culture throughout Russia.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: A. Benois, Tzarskoe Selo sotto Elisabetta (in Russian), St. Petersburg 1910; E. Lo Gatto, Gli artisti ital. in Russia, I. Rome 1934; M. Gibellino Krasceninnicova, Storia dell'arte russa, II, ibid. 1937.

Maria Gibellino Krasceninnicova

@incollection{ec10_rastrelli_bartolomeo_francesco, author = {Gibellino, Krasceninnicowa Maria}, title = {Rastrelli, bartolomeo francesco}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {X}, pages = {540--541}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/rastrelli-bartolomeo-francesco} }

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Rastrelli, Bartolomeo Francesco

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