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LOUIS CARAVAQUE (31.01.1684, Marseille – 09.06.1754, St Petersburg) The artistic legacy of Louis Caravaque is one of the most remarkable and significant phenomena in the Russian culture of the first half of the 18th century. According to an agreement that he signed in Paris with Ivan Lefort, an agent working for Peter the Great, on 13 November 1715, he committed himself to “go to St Petersburg and work for His Majesty the Tsar for three years, painting historical pictures, portraits, battles, trees and flowers, and animals, in oil, creating both large and small paintings.” Caravaque was also assigned to “hire Russians in order to teach them everything related to the art of painting.” He created portraits of Peter the Great and his family members, and about 30 battle paintings for the “Hall of Glorious Celebrations” and the Summer Palace of Catherine I in St Petersburg. And then he stayed in Russia for the rest of his life. |
In the 1720s and 1730s, he was in charge of the creation of plafonds in the Summer and Winter Palaces (1725-1729), and Peterhof (1720-1727) by the Chancellery of Construction painters. He also painted icons for the Church of the Winter Palace (1725), the Saint Isaac’s Church (1727), and the Nativity Church located on Nevsky Prospect (1747). In 1732, he became the director of the Tapestry Manufactory. The artist painted cartoons for the Battle of Poltatva tapestry (1717, State Hermitage), and the four tapestries with allegorical images of parts of the world based on drawings created by Charles Le Brun (1730s). He participated in the creation of the shrine of Alexander Nevsky (1747-1752). During the reign of Anna Ioannovna, he had to paint banners and create designs for feasts’ decorations, decorative lighting, fireworks, clothes, and carriages for the empress. In 1740 he was in charge of the memorial ceremony decoration at Anna Ioannovna’s funeral. He also created miniature paintings.
In 1723, the artist presented his plan for creating the Academy of Arts in Petersburg to Peter the Great, and in 1727 he presented the plan to Peter II. He was the first person to arrange the copying of paintings by European artists in Russia; he also introduced painting nudes from life. Caravaque taught many famous Russian students. During the 38 years he spent in Russia, he painted portraits of all Russian monarchs of the first half of the 18th century, starting with Peter the Great. He remained the first court painter during the reign of Anna Ioannovna. Empress Elizabeth Petrovna also preserved the exclusive right to paint her portraits for him.
Caravaque painted multiple portraits of Peter the Great, and established several canonically stable iconographical “types” of them. The first painting of this kind to be mentioned is the famous oval portrait of Peter the Great wearing the Preobrazhensky Regiment uniform, the original version of which was made as a small study, and all the “Caravaque’s type” portraits of Peter the Great, which were created later, were based on it.