Art and Power in the Reign of Catherine the Great: the State Portraits
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Art and Power in the Reign of Catherine the Great: The State Portraits Erin McBurney Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Erin McBurney !All rights reserved ABSTRACT Art and Power in the Reign of Catherine the Great: The State Portraits Erin McBurney This dissertation examines the relationship between art and power in the reign of Catherine II of Russia (1762-1796). It considers Catherine’s state portraits as historical texts that revealed symbolic manifestations of autocratic power, underscoring the close relationship between aesthetics and politics during the reign of Russia’s longest serving female ruler. The Russian empress actively exploited the portrait medium in order to transcend the limitations of her gender, assert legitimacy and display herself as an exemplar of absolute monarchy. The resulting symbolic representation was protean and adaptive, and it provided Catherine with a means to negotiate the anomaly of female rule and the ambiguity of her Petrine inheritance. In the reign of Catherine the Great, the state portraits functioned as an alternate form of political discourse. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations…………………………………………………..ii-v Introduction………………………………………………………...1-33 I. Ennui and Solitude……………………………………………...34-105 II. Seizing the Stage of Power…………………………………….106-139 III. Minerva Ascendant……………………………………………..140-212 IV. “Victorieuse et Legislatrice”…………………………………...213-279 V. Picturing the Greek Project…………………………………...280-340 VI. The Judgment of History…………………………………....…341-393 Conclusion……………………………………………………….394-397 Bibliography……………………………………………………,..398-426 i McBurney Art and Power List of Illustrations Figure 1. Godfrey Kneller, Peter I of Russia, 1698 2. Anna Rosina Liciewska, Princess Sophia of Anhalt Zerbst, c. 1740-42 3. Antoine Pesne, Princess Sophia of Anhalt Zerbst, c. 1742 4. George Grooth, Princess Sophia of Anhalt Zerbst, c. 1745 5. Louis Caravaque, Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseevna, c. 1745 6. Louis Caravaque, Empress Anna Ioannovna, 1730 7. Louis Caravaque, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, 1742 8. George Grooth, Grand Duke Peter Feodorov, 1743 9. George Grooth, Grand Duchess Catherine Alekseevna, 1745 10. George Grooth, Empress Elizabeth with Moor, 1745 11. George Grooth, Grand Duke Peter Astride, 1745 12. George Grooth, Grand Duchess Catherine Astride, 1745 13. George Grooth, Wedding portrait of Grand Duke Peter and Grand Duchess Catherine, c. 1745 14. Anna Rosina Lisiewska, Grand Duke Peter and Grand Duchess Catherine and a Kalmuk, 1756 15. Pietro Rotari, Grand Duchess Catherine, 1761 ii McBurney Art and Power List of Illustrations Figure 16. Vigilius Eriksen, Grand Duchess Catherine in Mourning Attire, 1762 17. Aleksei Antropov, Peter III (sketch), 1762 18. Aleksei Antropov, Peter III, 1762 19. Aleksei Antropov, Peter III (variant), 1762 20. Vigilius Eriksen, Catherine II Astride Brilliante, 1762 21. Sebastian Bourdon, Queen Christina of Sweden on Horseback, 1653 22. Pierre Mignard, Louis XIV Crowned by Victory, 1692 23. Franz Leopold Schmittner, Maria Theresa, “King of Hungary,” c. 1742 24. Throne Room at Peterhof 25. Vigilius Eriksen, Catherine II before a Mirror, c. 1762 26. Aleksei Antropov, Catherine II (sketch), 1762 27. Martin van Meytens, Double Portrait of Empress Maria Theresa and Archduke Joseph, 1744 28. Stefano Torelli, Coronation Portrait of Catherine II, c. 1766 29. Vigilius Eriksen, Catherine II in Coronation Attire, c. 1766 30. Vigilius Eriksen, Grand Duke Paul in his Study, c. 1765 iii McBurney Art and Power List of Illustrations Figure 31. Anton Mengs, Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, 1760 32. Stefano Torelli, Grand Duke Paul with Moor, 1766 33. Unknown, Miniature enamel on copper of Catherine with Nakaz, undated 34. Frontispiece engraving from the Polyglot Nakaz, 1770 35. Stefano Torelli, Catherine as Minerva, Patroness of the Arts, 1770 36. Louis Lagrenée, Empress Elizabeth as Patroness of the Arts, 1761 37. Stefano Torelli, Catherine as Minerva, Patroness of the Arts (sketch) 38. Stefano Torelli, Allegory of Victory over the Turks, 1772 39. Stefano Torelli, Allegory of Victory over the Turks, detail, 1772 40. Unknown, Portrait of Pugachev, c. 1773 41. Alexander Roslin, Catherine II, 1776 42. Alexander Roslin, Gustav III, 1777 43. Richard Brompton, Grand Dukes Alexander and Constantine, 1781 44. Richard Brompton, Catherine II, c. 1783 45. Dmitrii Levitskii, Catherine II as Legislatrix in the Temple of Justice, c. 1782-83 iv McBurney Art and Power List of Illustrations Figure 46. Dmitrii Levitskii, Catherine II as Legislatrix in the Temple of Justice, c. 1783 47. Mikhail Shibanov, Catherine the Great in Travelling Costume, 1787 48. Johann Baptist Lampi, Joseph II, c. 1786 49. Ferdinand de Mëys, Catherine II Voyageant dans ses Etats en 1787, c. 1788 50. Dmitrii Levitskii, Catherine II, c. 1787 51. Thomas Lawrence, Queen Charlotte, 1789-90 52. Johann Baptist Lampi, Austrian Chancellor Prince Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, 1786 53. Johann Baptist Lampi, Catherine II with Saturn and Clio, c. 1792 54. Johann Baptist Lampi, Catherine II, 1793 55. Johann Baptist Lampi, Catherine II, 1794 56. Johann Baptist Lampi, Grand Dukes Alexander and Constantine, 1795 v McBurney Art and Power Introduction In April 1796 Johann Baptist Lampi, an Austrian portrait painter on loan to the Russian court, wrote to Catherine II, Empress of Russia, to request a final sitting as he prepared to return to Vienna. In his short note, Lampi averred that after service to such an august sovereign he was no longer jealous of Apelles—the only artist permitted to paint Alexander the Great—such was the honor and artistic fulfillment of his position.1 Lampi’s comparison with the painter Apelles was a deliberate stratagem of praise that elevated both the artist and his sixty-seven year old patroness into the same firmament as the Macedonian ruler and his court painter. Moreover, Lampi was consciously equating his role at Catherine’s court with his recent artistic service to several Holy Roman Emperors, the brothers Joseph II and Leopold II, and their nephew Francis II. Their Habsburg ancestor, Charles V, gained eternal renown for hiring Titian as his exclusive court painter. In deliberate homage to Alexander the Great, Charles V dubbed Titian “this century’s Apelles” (huuis 1 Unpublished letter from Lampi to Catherine II of 22 April 1796 in Alessandro Casagrande, “Documenti inediti di Giambattista Lampi negli archivi russi,” Studi Trentini di Scienze Storiche,A.LXXV-LXXVII, Sezione II-1, Trento 1996-1998, 204. 1 McBurney Art and Power seculi Apelles) and would permit no other artist to portray him.2 Titian’s portraits of Charles V remain, in the words of Frances Yates, “one of the most striking presentations of Charles in his imperial role…the World Ruler on whose domains the sun never set.”3 More than two hundred years later, Russia’s longest ruling female monarch similarly exploited the aesthetics of portraiture to project gloire and articulate symbolic aspects of imperial power. Drawing on recent work in the fields of visual culture, art history, court studies, cultural history, gender and queenship, this study examines fifteen images of Catherine the Great painted between 1762 and 1796.4 I seek to reintegrate Catherine’s portrait imagery into the narrative of her reign and I interpret the state portraits as an important if 2 Hugh Trevor-Roper, Princes and Artists: Patronage and ideology at four Habsburg Courts, 1517- 1633 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), 29. Charles V also made Titian a Count of Palatine and a Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur, thereby ensuring hereditary nobility for his descendants and establishing an early modern precedent for lavish remuneration for talented court artists. Martin Gosman, “Princely Culture: Friendship or Patronage?” in Princes and Princely Culture, 1450-1650 (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2003), 11. 3 Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Taylor and Francis, 1975), 22. 4 The state portraits constitute but one part of an extensive visual archive that includes medals, mosaics, miniatures, coins, tapestries and sculpture that are beyond the scope of the present study. 2 McBurney Art and Power often overlooked aspect of her absolutist scenario. I argue that the evolution of Catherine’s visual image was a direct reflection of contemporary political culture both in Russia and abroad. Moreover, the inventive manner in which the Russian empress manipulated iconographic norms and experimented in the visual medium was on a scale without precedent and in a manner that was largely unknown among her contemporary heads of state. The state portraits constitute but one aspect of a symbolic “liturgy of state” constructed over the course of her thirty-four year reign; this dynamic representational scenario presented the image of the Empress as the embodiment of empire and as an exemplar of Russian sovereignty.5 * * * Figurative portraits of the tsars were not produced in Russia before the reign of Peter I. His famous portrait of 1698 by Godfrey Kneller, Peter I (figure 1), is widely considered the first secular state portrait of a Russian ruler and it is instructive that the picture was painted while the tsar was in London during his 5 “Liturgy of state” is a term coined by Roy Strong to describe the manner in which Queen Elizabeth I’s elaborate representative scenario appropriated aspects of Roman Catholic liturgical practice