Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/35

 Shuvalov, a completely organised Academy of Fine Arts was definitely established. Nominally, the new institution was connected with the University of Moscow, but its seat was in Petrograd, the centre of court and aristocratic life. The Academy was an artistic hothouse, similar in character to the entire group of Russian and foreign masters, who were independent of the Academy, and usually lived in the northern capital, leaving it only to follow the court in its migrations.

Under Elizabeth, a number of Russian artists became prominent before the Academy of Fine Arts was founded. Their appearance bears witness to the efflorescence of Russian culture in the forties and fifties of the eighteenth century.

Among these artists the following deserve our attention: Ivan Argunov, a serf of Count Sheremetev, A. Matvyeyev's relative; Alexyey Antropov, a master of design and perspective; Makhayev, Valeriani's disciple; and a group of icon painters, rather mediocre, but interesting for their quaint attempts to combine the demands of the orthodox canon with the cleverness of the Italian Rococo. The icons in the court chapels of Peterhof and Tzarskoye Selo, and those in the Cathedral of St. Nicholas of the Sea in Petrograd, are curious samples of this style.

Only Argunov and Antropov in this group of artists