In response, Catherine lead a revolt against her husband that resulted in his strangulation at the hands of a man who was then promoted to the position of Commander of the Russian Navy. Before she was crowned, Catherine’s husband, Peter III, tried to have Catherine extruded from the royal line for having an extra-marital affair. She utilized several of these commissioned portraits and art for propaganda. The five pound creation, which cost an eighth of the state budget, would be the first of hundreds of pieces commissioned by the tsarina.

In fact, her ascension to the throne resulted in her first commissioned piece, her coronation crown, created by Jérémie Pauzié.

Petersburg, Russia during her lecture.Ĭatherine the Great had a passion for art and architecture that developed over the course of her 34-year reign as tsarina. In a summary of this accumulation of knowledge, which is encased in her book, Jaques took the time to detail both why art was important to Catherine the Great and how the empress collected the vast collection that resided in St. Jaques graduated from Stanford University with a major in history and went on to both earn an MBA from the University of California and be a docent at the J. To promote her book, “The Empress of Art: Catherine the Great and the Transformation of Russia,” Susan Jaques, a member of the Historians of the 18th Century Art and Architecture group, spoke to a group of Fairfield town residents about the collection “in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.” While the event was lacking in attendance from the student population, it was none the less a fascinating and educational experience, made all the better by Jaques’ readily apparent expertise and her infectious passion for the subject. An event that turned Russia into “a world wonder,” as the woman who sought to rectify this knowledge gap, Susan Jaques, announced at her lecture in Bellarmine Hall’s Diffley Board Room. While the general public knows a lot about the individual pieces included in this collection, the same cannot be said about the time and circumstances surrounding the momentous occasion when all of these pieces resided together in St. These pieces ranged from works the empress commissioned to placate stilted lovers then purchased back once they died, to works created by some of the greats, including Rembrandt and Michelangelo. Empress Catherine the Great of Russia is known for her unlikely military victories, her focus on raising the opinion of Russia in the eyes of world powers and for the vast collection of priceless masterpieces which she purchased over the course of her reign.

The Empress of Art by Susan Jaques