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Betskoy
Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi or Betskoy (; ) was an educational reformer in the Russian Empire who served as Catherine II's advisor on education and President of the Imperial Academy of Arts for thirty years (1764–1794). Perhaps the crowning achievement of his long career was the establishment of Russia's first unified system of public education. Life Betskoy's parents were Prince Ivan Trubetskoy, a Russian field marshal, and his Swedish mistress, Baroness von Wrede. His surname is the abbreviated form of his father's - a tradition for Russian surnames of illegitimate children. He was born in Stockholm, where Trubetskoy was held captive throughout the Great Northern War, and went to Copenhagen to get a military education before joining a Danish cavalry regiment. It was in the Danish service that he sustained a fall from a horse which forced him to retire from the service. Field Marshal Trubetskoy, having no other sons but Betskoy, called him to the Russian Empire in 1729. At first ...
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Betskoy Ivan Ivanovich
Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi or Betskoy (; ) was an educational reformer in the Russian Empire who served as Catherine II of Russia, Catherine II's advisor on education and President of the Imperial Academy of Arts for thirty years (1764–1794). Perhaps the crowning achievement of his long career was the establishment of Education in Russia, Russia's first unified system of State school, public education. Life Betskoy's parents were Prince Ivan Trubetskoy, a Russian field marshal, and his Swedish mistress, Baroness von Wrede family, Wrede. His surname is the abbreviated form of his father's - a tradition for Russian surnames of illegitimate children. He was born in Stockholm, where Trubetskoy was held captive throughout the Great Northern War, and went to Copenhagen to get a military education before joining a Danish cavalry regiment. It was in the Danish service that he sustained a fall from a horse which forced him to retire from the service. Field Marshal Trubetskoy, having no othe ...
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Catherine II Of Russia
Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter III. Under her long reign, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, Russia experienced a renaissance of culture and sciences, which led to the founding of many new cities, universities, and theatres, along with large-scale immigration from the rest of Europe and the recognition of Russia as one of the great powers of Europe. In her accession to power and her rule of the empire, Catherine often relied on her noble favourites, most notably Count Grigory Orlov and Grigory Potemkin. Assisted by highly successful generals such as Alexander Suvorov and Pyotr Rumyantsev, and admirals such as Samuel Greig and Fyodor Ushakov, she governed at a time when the Russian Empire was expanding rapidly by conquest and diplomacy. In the south, th ...
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Russian Surnames Of Illegitimate Children
In the Russian Empire, illegitimate children were sometimes given artificial surnames, rather than the surnames of their parents. In some cases an illegitimate child of a Russian aristocrat was given a surname derived from the surname of the father by truncation of the first syllable. For example, Trubetskoy was trimmed to Betskoy. There were some other ways to hint at the parent's surname, while in still other cases new surnames had no direct relation to that of parent's.Boris Unbegaun, ''Russian surnames'', — Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972; Russian version: ''Русские фамилии'', 1989Chapter IX: "Artificial surnames"И. М. Ганжина (I. M. Ganzhina). "Словарь современных русских фамилий" (''Dictionary of Modern Russian Last Names''). Moscow, 2001. Other truncated surnames include: Yelagin to Agin, Repnin to Pnin, Golitsyn to Litsyn or , Vorontsov to Rantsov, Rumyantsev to Umyantsev, and Potemkin Prince Grigory Aleksand ...
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Imperial Academy Of Arts
The Imperial Academy of Arts, informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, was an art academy in Saint Petersburg, founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov, the founder of the Imperial Moscow University, under the name ''Academy of the Three Noblest Arts''. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, completed 25 years later in 1789 by the Neva River. The academy promoted the neoclassical style and technique, and sent its promising students to European capitals for further study. Training at the academy was virtually required for artists to make successful careers. Formally abolished in 1918 after the Russian Revolution, the academy was renamed several times. It established free tuition; students from across the country competed fiercely for its few places annually. In 1947 the national institution was moved to Moscow, and much of its art collection was moved to the Hermitage. The building in Leningrad was devoted to th ...
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Summer Garden
The Summer Garden () is a historic public garden that occupies an eponymous island between the Neva, Fontanka, Moika, and the Swan Canal in downtown Saint Petersburg, Russia and shares its name with the adjacent Summer Palace of Peter the Great. Its inception dates back to the early 18th century when Russia took these lands from Sweden in the Great Northern War. Being a monument of landscape architecture featuring original and copied sculptures of classical mythology characters, a former royal palace and a monument to the fable author Ivan Krylov, the garden is now a branch of the Saint Petersburg-based national art treasury Russian Museum. Landscape design Original The park was personally designed by Tsar Peter in 1704, supposedly, with the assistance of the Dutch gardener and physician Nicolaas Bidloo. Starting from 1712, the planting of the Summer Garden was further elaborated by the Dutch gardener Jan Roosen, who was the chief gardener of the park till 1726. The w ...
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Georg Von Veldten
Georg Friedrich Veldten, russified as Yury Matveyevich Felten (; 1730–1801) was a Russian Imperial architect who served at the Empress Catherine the Great's court. Yury Felten was born Georg Veldten, into a family of German immigrants to Russia. His father worked for the Russian Academy of Sciences. Young Yury Felten studied on a Russian State scholarship at the Gymnasium of the Academy of Sciences. In 1744, after the death of his father, Felten moved to Germany. From 1744 to 1749 he studied at Tübingen University, but his financial and personal situation prompted him to move back to St. Petersburg. Felten wrote a letter to Empress Elizabeth, and she extended her hospitality and a scholarship, so he completed his studies at the Russian Academy, graduating in 1752 as an architect. From 1752 to 1762 Felten worked as assistant to the celebrated architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli during the construction of the Winter Palace and other buildings in and around St. Petersburg. In the 1 ...
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Bronze Horseman
The ''Bronze Horseman'' (, literally "copper horseman") is an equestrian statue of Peter I of Russia, Peter the Great in the Senate Square (Saint Petersburg), Senate Square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was opened to the public on 7 (18) August 1782 in art, 1782. Commissioned by Catherine the Great, it was created by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet. The statue influenced a 1833 The Bronze Horseman (poem), poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, which is widely considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature. The statue is now one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg. The statue's pedestal is the Thunder Stone, the List of largest monoliths in the world#Moved monoliths, largest stone ever moved by humans. The stone originally weighed about 1500 tonnes, but was carved down during transportation to its current size and weight of 1,250 tons. Statue The equestrian statue of Peter the Great is situated in the Saint Petersburg Senate Square, Se ...
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Étienne Maurice Falconet
Étienne Maurice Falconet (1 December 1716 – 24 January 1791) was a French baroque, rococo and Neoclassical sculpture, neoclassical sculptor, best-known for his equestrian statue of Peter the Great, the ''Bronze Horseman'' (1782), in St. Petersburg, Russia, and for the small statues he produced in series for the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, Royal Sévres Porcelain Manufactory Life and work Falconet was born to a poor family in Paris. He was at first apprenticed to a marble-cutter, but some of his clay and wood figures, with the making of which he occupied his leisure hours, attracted the notice of the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, who made him his pupil. One of his most successful early sculptures was of Milo of Croton, which secured his admission to the membership of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1754. He came to prominent public attention in the Paris Salon, Salons of 1755 and 1757 with his marbles of ''L'Amour'' (Cupid) and the ''Nymphe desce ...
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Encyclopédistes
The Encyclopédistes () (also known in British English as Encyclopaedists, or in U.S. English as Encyclopedists) were members of the , a French writers' society, who contributed to the development of the ''Encyclopédie'' from June 1751 to December 1765 under the editors Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and only Diderot from 1765 to 1772. History The composition of the 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates of the ''Encyclopédie'' was the work of over 150 authors belonging, in large part, to the intellectual group known as the philosophes. They promoted the advancement of science and secular thought and supported the tolerance, rationality, and open-mindedness of the Enlightenment. More than a hundred encyclopédistes have been identified. They were not a unified group, neither in ideology nor social class.Frank A. Kafker, ''The Encyclopedists as a Group: A Collective Biography of the Authors of the Encyclopédie'' (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996). Below s ...
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Ekaterina Dashkova
Princess Yekaterina Romanovna Dashkova (born Countess Vorontsova; ; 28 March 1743 – 15 January 1810) This source reports that Prince Dashkov died in 1761. was an influential noblewoman, a major figure of the Russian Enlightenment and a close friend of Empress Catherine the Great. She was part of the ''coup d'état'' that placed Catherine on the throne, the first woman in the world to head a national academy of sciences, the first woman in Europe to hold a government office and the president of the Russian Academy, which she helped found. She also published prolifically, with original and translated works on many subjects, and was invited by Benjamin Franklin to become the first female member of the American Philosophical Society. Early life and education Born into an old House of Vorontsov, Countess Yekaterina Romanovna was the daughter of Count Roman Vorontsov (1717–1783), a member of the Senate, and his wife, Marfa Ivanovna Surmina (1718–1745), divorced Princess Dolgo ...
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Peter III Of Russia
Peter III Fyodorovich (; ) was Emperor of Russia from 5 January 1762 until 9 July of the same year, when he was overthrown by his wife, Catherine II (the Great). He was born in the German city of Kiel as Charles Peter Ulrich of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp (), the grandson of Peter the Great and great-grandson of Charles XI of Sweden. After a 186-day reign, Peter III was overthrown in a palace coup d'état orchestrated by his wife and soon died under unclear circumstances. The official cause proposed by Catherine's new government was that he died due to hemorrhoids. However, this explanation was met with skepticism, both in Russia and abroad, with notable critics such as Voltaire and d'Alembert expressing doubt about the plausibility of death from such a condition. The personality and activities of Peter III were long disregarded by historians and his figure was seen as purely negative, but since the 1990s, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, more attention has been dir ...
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