Carlo bartolomeo rastrelli biography

Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli was born in Florence, Tuscany, in the family of a wealthy nobleman Francesco Rastrelli.

Rastrelli helped to plan Vasilyevsky Island and the park at Strelna, and designed the interiors for several noble residences, including Peter the Great's summer retreat Monplaisir at Peterhof, where he also provided sculptural decorations for Grand Cascade.

Also in 1748, Rastrelli used an almost identical design for the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Kiev (1748-1767). Using all these details, by the order of Catherine I of Russia, he made a wax-and-wood figure of Peter, which is exhibited in the Hermitage. In 1741, he completed the statue of "Anna Ioannovna with a black boy", which is exhibited in the Russian Museum.

Busts and wax figure of Peter I

In 1719, Rastrelli made a mask of Peter's face, which he used in his work on three busts of Peter: in bronze (currently in the Hermitage), in wood (for a military ship) and in gilded lead (currently in the Copenhagen Museum).

He ordered to add the inscription "From great grandson to great grandfather" to the pedestal, which was already decorated with bas-reliefs depicting scenes of Russian victories during the Great Northern War.

Although his fame was eclipsed by his son, Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, architect of the Winter Palace and the Catherine Palace in Tsaskoye Selo, Carlo Rastrelli was among the most prominent artists working in St. Petersburg in the first decades of the city's existence.

There Rastrelli built two palaces for von Biron - at Rundale (1736-1740) and Jelgava (1738-1740). He began his professional education under his father (also a trained architect), and is presumed to have studied in Europe at some point in the 1720s. The bronze bust was cast in 1723, and its details were refined in 1729 by an assistant of Rastrelli.

After Peter's death in 1725, Rastrelli made another face mask, as well as molds of his hands and feet; he also accurately measured his body.

Shortly after his fortieth birthday, he was invited to work in St. Petersburg, where he arrived with his family in 1716. Carlo received versatile training in arts, which included work with bronze and jewelry, as well as drawing, casting and architecture design. Peter the Great used this situation to attract demoted artists to Russia, and so in 1715 Rastrelli and his son were invited to Russia.

Rastrelli's duties included the design of palaces, gardens, fountains, theatrical decorations, stamps for minting coins and medals, as well as monuments, using various materials such as rocks, metals and wax.

The tomb was demolished in 1792.

He continued designing tombstones in the Baroque style, but they found less success in France, which already moved toward Neoclassicism. The blue ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew crosses the chest. He was then sent to the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia in modern day Latvia, where von Biron would become Duke in 1737.

Born of a wealthy Florentine family, Rastrelli spent the first half of his professional career in France, where he gained considerable success as a sculptor and designer of interiors, and was able to buy himself the title of Count from the Papal Nuncio. Nonetheless, as the creator of the Winter Palace and the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, his name is synonymous with the extraordinary, at times excessive, luxury enjoyed and displayed by Russia's Romanov rulers in the 18th century, perhaps the most immediately striking aspect of St. Petersburg's architecture for visitors.

Born in Paris, he was the son of Carlo Rastrelli, a sculptor who had come to St. Petersburg in 1716 to work for Peter the Great.

In 1724, he created a model that was approved by Peter, but the construction of the main monument was halted by Peter's death; it was completed only in 1744–46 by his son, after the death of Rastrelli.

Catherine the Great reviewed Rastrelli's work in 1763, but disliked it. He arrived in Saint Petersburg in March 1716 on a three-year contract, but stayed in Russia until his death in 1744.

In Russia Rastrelli initially worked primarily as an architect.