Engraving Chamber

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ENGRAVING CHAMBER was an engraving workshop, a section of St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences of Russia which made engravings mainly for publishing houses, including book illustrations, scientific illustrations and tables, botanical and anatomical drawings, maps, etc. It was founded concurrently with the Academy of Sciences in 1724. Initially, the Engraving Chamber employed mostly foreign engravers (H. I. Unfezacht, C. А. Wortman, O. Elliger et al.); from the beginning of the 1740s, Russian masters, including I. A. Sokolov, G. A. Kachalov, M. I. Makhaev, E. G. Vinogradov et al. played the leading role in the work of the Chamber, In 1746-57, the Engraving Chamber headed by Sokolov was incorporated as the future Academy of Fine Arts in the structure of the Academy of Sciences in 1747. The chamber greatly widened its activities and became a centre of studying engraving. Some plate engravings were done in the Engraving Chamber, including official portraits of members of the Imperial family, portraits of academicians, and city views. The Chamber also made commissioned albums, in particular those devoted to the coronations of Empress Anna Ioannovna (1730-31) and Empress Elizaveta Petrovna (1742-45), as well as albums of the Chambers of the Academy of Sciences (1741), and the illustrated catalogue of the Chamber of Curiosities (1747). The album of prints, entitled Plan of the capital city of St. Petersburg with the pictures of its most famous prospect (1749-53, according to the sketches by Makhaev) made under the supervision of G. Valeriani became the best work ever done by the Engraving Chamber. From the 1760s, the activity of the Engraving Chamber gradually diminished as the independent Academy of Arts was formed; from that time on its business was limited, and new projects catered only to the needs of the Academy of Sciences. In January 1805 the Engraving Chamber was liquidated.

References: Гравировальная палата Академии наук XVIII века: Сб. док. Л., 1985.

O. L. Leikind, D. S. Severyukhin. Anna Ioannovna, Empress
Elizaveta Petrovna, Empress
Elliger Ottomar
Kachalov Grigory Anikievich
Makhaev Mikhail Ivanovich
Sokolov Ivan Alexeevich
Unfezacht G.I.
Valeriani Giuseppe
Vinogradov Efim Grigoryevich
Wortman Christian-Albert
Гравировальная палата Академии наук XVIII века: Сб. док. Л., 1985 Russian Academy of Sciences
Academy of Arts
Academy of Arts