1794
oil on canvas
70 x 108

The painting depicts the panorama of the Palace Embankment of St Petersburg. The poet K.N. Batiushkov wrote in raptures of this work: “Look now on the embankment, on these huge palaces each more magnificent than the others! On these houses, each more beautiful than the next! …How splendid and beautiful this part of the city is!” We see on the bank of the Neva to the right the Marble Palace with its servants’ building; further on there is the house of the Princes Baryatinsky and the palace of rear admiral de Ribas, founder of Odessa. To one side of the panorama is the Summer Garden with its famous wrought iron fence. The foreground of the painting is taken by the wall of the Peter and Paul Fortress. In turning to the genre of urban landscape, Alekseev created in the painting an ideal and harmonious world. Water, air and architecture meld into a single inseparable whole. Poetry and noble restrained delight fill the landscape. The artist’s contemporaries wrote enthusiastically about the “harmony and transparency which constitute the main virtues of his technique.”

at 10, Lavrushinsky Lane, Hall 6