Petrine Baroque

Petrine Baroque (Russian: Петровское барокко) is a style of 17th and 18th century Baroque architecture and decoration favoured by Peter the Great and employed to design buildings in the newly founded Russian capital, Saint Petersburg, under this monarch and his immediate successors.

Different from contemporary Naryshkin Baroque, favoured in Moscow, the Petrine Baroque represented a dramatic departure from Byzantine traditions that had dominated Russian architecture for almost a millennium. Its chief practitioners - Domenico Trezzini, Andreas Schlüter, and Mikhail Zemtsov - drew inspiration from a rather modest Dutch, Danish, and Swedish architecture of the time.

Extant examples of the style in St Petersburg are the Peter and Paul Cathedral (Trezzini), the Twelve Colleges (Trezzini), the Kunstkamera (Georg Johann Mattarnovi), Kikin Hall (Schlüter) and Menshikov Palace (Giovanni Fontana). ^{[citation needed]}

The Petrine Baroque structures outside St. Petersburg are scarce; they include the Menshikov Tower in Moscow and Kadriorg Palace in Tallinn ^{[citation needed]}

Peter the Great, also known as Peter I, served as the tsar of Russia from 1682–1725. He was the first Russian monarch to travel outside of Russia and this travel exposed him to the architecture of many other countries. His own library contained architectural books from the Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy. The buildings of these countries influenced Peter's taste in architecture as he set forward to build the new Russian capital of St. Petersburg. Peter had a very specific idea of what he wanted this new city to look like in terms of architectural style, and he took initiative in recruiting people who could help accomplish his vision and researching architectural styles. While in rule, Peter attempted to bring about change to the nation of Russia as quickly as possible and tried to incorporate western style and tradition into the everyday lives of his citizens. As part of this, Peter put regulations into effect, which mandated what cities should look like.

Peter's original goal for St. Petersburg was to re-create the city of Amsterdam. As the city began construction, Peter started making changes to the designs of the buildings, often altering the planned appearance of buildings once their construction had already started. These last minute alterations led to buildings not belonging to one particular architectural school.

Peter was raised in Moscow, lived at the Kremlin, and spent time at multiple royal estates outside of the city. His father Alexis died when he was four years old, so Peter had a fairly unsupervised youth to pursue his own passions. Peter developed his taste for architecture by looking at the buildings which surrounded him in his childhood, many of which were patronized by his family. These churches and houses which surrounded Moscow reflected European influence in their structure and decoration. The Moscow or Naryshkin Baroque style, named after Peter's maternal side of the family, was prominent in these buildings. Characteristic of the Naryshkin Baroque are large scale buildings and lack of wood amongst building materials.

As Peter entered young adulthood and spent time travelling, his architectural taste began to favor the elements of Dutch architecture. Peter met with the Dutch architect Simon Schijnvoet (sometimes Schynvoet or Schynvaet) in 1697. Schijnvoet specialized in Dutch Baroque but also taught Peter about naval architecture. The cabin in St. Petersburg that Peter designed utilized elements from this naval style which Schjinvoet taught him, including flat, painted log walls, wooden tile-like shingles, and windows made from small planes of glass. These elements of design were unlike the Russian styles seen up until this point.