Modernization, cultural exchange and innovation in Russian print culture: St Petersburg in the Talbot Collection

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The Talbot Collection at the Ashmolean Museum is a source unparalleled outside of Russia for the study of print culture and urban development in St Petersburg. The c 1000 prints date from shortly after the foundation of the city in 1703 until the 1830s, spanning a period of rapid development in print technology, modes of picturing urban space, and the building and re-building of the city itself. The project will assess the scope of the collection and consider key research questions. Firstly, the question of verisimilitude, including scientific attempts to record the city's topography. This may extend to capturing a "spirit of place", perhaps explaining the enduring popularity of the 1753 prints for the city's jubilee long after they became topographically inaccurate. It will also consider changing modes of viewing prints, from 18th-century vedute on large sheets or bound in volumes, to the experiential panorama of the 19th century that either surround the viewer (publically) or require unfolding (privately). These formats may relate to acts of viewing the city. It will also consider the role of foreigners in creating and disseminating prints. Views from within the city by resident foreign artists contrast with earlier and contemporary views by travelling Europeans, in which Russia, especially Moscow, was often cast as an eastern land. Cornelius de Bruijn's "Travels into Muscovy, Persia and the East-Indies" (1737) is a case in point. Built looking to the West, St Petersburg could be a site of self-fashioning, absorbing foreigners who trained a generation of native artists in the new Imperial Academy. I envisage the focus of research evolving as the holdings are evaluated.