This website is part of The New York Public Library's Online Exhibition Archive. For current classes, programs, and exhibitions, please visit nypl.org.
Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825
1453 Through the Reign of Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584) The Time of Troubles to the First Romanovs (1598-1682) Peter the Great and His Legacy (1682-1762) The Age of Catherine the Great (1762-1801) The Reign of Emperor Alexander I (1801-1825)

                                     

Explore this Section:

  Russia Events
Russia Symbol The June Coup (June 28, 1762)
Russia Symbol Red Convocation of the Legislative Commission (1767)
Russia Symbol Pugachev Rebellion (1773–74)
Russia Symbol Charter of the Towns (1785)
Russia Symbol Founding of the Smolnyi Institute
  World Events
World Symbol
 The French Revolution Begins, 1789
World Symbol Revolt on the Island of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), 1791
World Symbol
 The French Expedition to Egypt, 1798–99
World Symbol
 The French Civil Code Is Issued, 1804


Russia's Globalization:
A Key

Events marked Russia Symbol are specific to Muscovy/Russia's internal development.
Those marked World Symbol are important world historical or cultural events.
Engagement Symbol indicates specific points of sociocultural or military engagement between Muscovy/Russia and foreign powers or individuals.




















 

 
   St. Petersburg’s Popular Types
 
   Photographic Services & Permissions
 
Christian Gotthelf Schönberg (b. 1760) and Christian Gottfried Heinrich Geissler (1770–1844)
St. Petersburgische Hausierer: Crieurs publics de St. Pétersbourg [St. Petersburg’s Street Peddlers]
St. Petersburg: Carl Lissner, 1794
NYPL, Spencer Collection

Russian “types” were a favorite subject of foreign artists who visited or resided in Moscow and St. Petersburg. This collection of colored etchings of street peddlers in the capital was the work of two such artists who lived and worked in St. Petersburg. Geissler accompanied the so-called Academy Expedition of 1768–74 sponsored by Catherine the Great to explore and document the empire’s provinces, and his drawings appear in many of the ethnographic works subsequently published. This image depicts a caviar seller.