Authors

Discussion

The problem of defining a new national pantheon, that is, a selectеd set of individuals whose lives and deeds can be considered nationally significant, was occupying European minds during the Sattelzeit. In the Age of Revolutions, especially after the end of the Napoleonic wars, this nationally colored form of the exempla virtutis took shape in ambitious projects of various spaces containing images of the great people of the nation (mainly sets of statues or busts).

The Russian Empire did not escape this preoccupation with pantheons, and this paper investigates commemorative practices that emerged in Russia at the turn of the 19th century as a consequence of this enthusiasm. Catherine the Great already expressed interest in the idea by commissioning a bust set of great men of antiquity for the Cameron Gallery. During the time of Alexander I, the pantheon became associated with national virtues and grew in popularity, but in the specific form of literary visions (such us Pavel Lvov's Temple of Fame of Russian Heroes) and unrealized projects (such us Alexey Malinovsky's programme of the sculptural decoration of the Kremlin Armory). The implementation of such projects related to the era's pantheonic imagination fell to the lot of Nikolas I, who selectively used the idea of a national pantheon for the Patriotic War of 1812 commemoration.