The Russian School of Painting
that of Tannhauer. In the reign of Empress Anna loannovna, Nikitin, who was involved in the case of the monk Josiah, was knouted and transported to Siberia in 1736, whence he was recalled in the reign of Empress Anna Leopoldovna. However, it was not given to the artist, worn out by his long exile, to see his home again; he died on the way, in the fall of 1741. It is probable that many of his works are still in existence, scattered in different estates and palaces, but it will hardly ever be possible to ascertain what pictures are really his, as one authentic, although not very typical picture is not enough for the formation of a definite judgment about a painter. The single work of Roman, his brother, the portrait of Vassa Stroganov, is interesting only from the standpoint of costume.
The reign of Elizabeth opens a new period of Russian painting. The queen had a liking and a discriminating taste for luxury; she was dissatisfied with the dulness by which the court life of her predecessor, like that of the petty German courts, was marked; her conceptions were grandiose. From the artistic standpoint, the reign of Elizabeth was to Russia almost what the reign of Louis XIV was to France. In her reign and for a time under her personal supervision, the Anninsky Winter Palace was rebuilt. Later on she erected a new wooden palace and almost completed the new stone
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