Show all images on one page	#001670 Title: Peter the Great reforms Russia Artist: Kurilov Vladimir Size: 18x23.5x5 Size (inches): 9.25x7x1.75 Price : $950 SOLD!

Peter the Great possessed a penchant for war games, especially military drills and crafting sieges. He became acquainted with a small community of European soldiers, from whom he learned Western European tactics and war strategy. In 1689, just as Peter was to come of age, his older sister Sophia attempted a second coup, which was put down and resulted in her imprisonment to the Novodevichiy Convent in Moscow. Six years later Tsar Ivan died, leaving Peter in sole possession of the throne. Rather than taking up residence and rule in Moscow, he responded by embarking on a Grand Tour of Europe. He spent two years abroad, meeting not only monarchs and conducting diplomacy, but traveling incognito and even doing manual labor in Holland for example. He amassed a considerable body of knowledge on Western European industry and state administration, becoming determined to modernize the Russian state and bring the Russian people closer to the West.
Peter's return to Russia and assumption of personal rule hit the country like a hurricane. He banned traditional Muscovite dress for all men, introduced military conscription, established technical schools, replaced the church patriarchy with a holy synod that answered to him, simplified the alphabet, changed his title from Tsar to Emperor, and introduced a hundred other reforms, restrictions, and novelties (all of which had the conservative clergy convinced that he was the antichrist). In 1703 he embarked on the most dramatic of his reforms--the decision to transfer the capital from Moscow to a new city to be built from scratch on the Gulf of Finland. Over the next nine years, at tremendous human and material cost, St. Petersburg was created.
Thus in 1712 after working non-stop for nine years, with funding coming from nobles, merchants, and the royal family Petersburg was an architectural wonder and the new capital of Russia. Although political control shifted to Petersburg, much of the economic and religious control stayed in Moscow. The city was in a place where it should not have been standing. The land was marshy and soft, and every stone the city was built with was quarried elsewhere and transported to the area. Today the city is slowly sinking, not unlike Venice, Italy. Floods have been known to engulf the city and although modern engineering has tamed this problem bad flooding allows waters from the canals to rise into the streets.
The artist relies on a warm palette to express the deeply historical moments found in the scene. On the right he paints Big Ben, from what Peter saw in his travels abroad. Behind this scene he paints one of the seventeen Kremlin towers and the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. In the foreground he paints a representation of how Peter brought his knowledge from his travels to change Russia and how he shifted power from Moscow and the clergy to himself and St. Petersburg. At the top of the scene two angels hold a crest that represents the city.
Each person in the composition is painted painstakingly and has highly developed lines and emotive qualities. The architecture is precisely drawn and all of the colors accurately show what the original architects had in mind. Gold is used extensively in the development of the details in the composition. Very thin and smooth detailing is drawn in, which brings out the true radiance of the palette. The box is made out of paper-mache made in Palekh. Black lacquer covers the exterior and red lacquer covers the interior of the box. Aluminum beading frames the composition and gold ornamentation accented with aluminum wraps around the sides of the box. The box has a hinge above the composition and rests on four carved feet. The artist has written Palekh, 2005, and his name at the bottom of the composition.