History of Saint-Petersburg: The exhibition “The engravings with the views of Saint-Petersburg and ships on the Neva”

The exhibition "The engravings with the views of St. Petersburg and the courts on the Neva River" to the 25th anniversary of the return to St. Petersburg's historic name and 300th anniversary of M. I. Mahaev, runs until February 15, 2017 at the Central Naval Museum (St. Petersburg). 

The exhibition features a reprint of the album "The plan of the capital city of St. Petersburg with the image of the most illustrious avenues", published by the works of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in St. Petersburg in 1753 to the 50th anniversary of St. Petersburg. 

From generation to generation, from century to century the popularity of prints from this tome is not quenched, and the relevance of and the main idea of ​​its creation takes more and more new forms. Renaming the city and its streets, then the return of ancestral names in the history of the northern capital of our country reflects the history of modern and contemporary time.

16 sheets of the album were engraved on the drawings of Michael Mahaev. Many articles and monographs, books and albums, devoted to the biography and works of M. I. Mahaev from F. G. Berenshtam, A. A. Fedorov-Davydov, Y. I. Gerstein and A. A. Sidorov to G. N. Kamelov, M. A. Alekseeva and K. V. Malinovsky, give detailed descriptions of the city and the sequence of works on creation of the famous album of 1753. Studying the life of M. Mahaev it is supplemented the information on the wizard, and refined features of the playback architecture of the city in his works, but the marine component goes by the wayside. 

This exhibition aims to talk about the symbolism of marine symbols of St. Petersburg, to remind the sea capital, embodied in the compositions of M. Mahaev. The exhibition for the first time in more than 70 years features half models of ships of the time. Each of them held a scientific attribution with results that can be found in the labeling for these subjects. It is also presented sculptural figures, reconstructing the form of clothing sailors and officers of the Russian fleet from the time of Anna Ivanovna to Catherine II.

Specially for the exhibition it was printed the album "assembled" on the scale and form in which it was presented to the Empress Elizabeth, and then in the European monarchic collection. Plan with 12 views of St. Petersburg has been printed in the May 1753 in edition of hundred copies and is intended "as a gift overseas Ambassadors and envoys and gains at outlandish courts of the Russian ambassador to Vienna, the Hague, Dresden, envoys in Warsaw, Hamburg, Danzig, Copenhagen, London, Stockholm, and royal library in Berlin, Dresden, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Stockholm".

100 copies of our publications show the evolution of the use of the lens effect and phototype printing. In 1753, M. Makhaev used the camera obscura to display on paper, and the author of prints of 2016 used when printing images on a sheet with pigment chromotype. This fact brings together two masters, as well as the beginning and the end of an era of photos.