Since I don't have any fresh material to post, I had to raid the archives (again). I was looking through some of the photos that I have on my hard drive, and I've decided that this week will be devoted entirely to photos which I captured last summer in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is a magical city, and I hope you'll agree with me after looking through the images I will post this week. You may even learn something new if you read the captions.

Starting off: an image of The Russian Academy of Arts. Founded in 1757, The Russian Academy of Arts has been classed by a decree of the President of the Russian Federation as one of the nation’s most precious cultural institutions.

Count Ivan Shuvalov actually opened the museum in a different location under the name of the The Academy of Three Noblest Arts in 1757. It was not until 1764, however, when Catherine the Great renamed the museum to Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned its first rector, Alexander Kokorinov, to design a new building for the academy. It took twenty-five years to construct the Neoclassical edifice of the current building, which faces the Winter Palace (future entry on this photoblog) from the other bank of the Neva River. Konstantin Thon was responsible for the decoration of the interiors of the museum; Thon also designed a quayside in front of the edifice and brought 3000-year-old sphinxes and griffins from Egypt to decorate the exterior of the museum.

The museum consists of numerous departments, including Department of Painting, Department of Sculpture, Department of Graphic Art, Department of Architecture, Department of Design, Department of Innovative Art Trends, and a Department of Photography and Multimedia Technologies.

You may learn more about the museum here, which begins with the following paragraph: The Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts is one of the oldest fine arts collections in St. Petersburg. It was founded in 1758 in the reign of Empress Elizabeth to provide young artists with a possibility to learn from the best works of art. I.I. Shuvalov, the initiator and first curator of the Academy (established in 1757), presented as a gift his private collection of paintings including canvases by Raphael, Veronese, Rubens and other masters that became a core of the Museum collection.

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