Russian Baroque

[1] Baroque architecture is characterised by the opening of volumes into surrounding space, dynamism, expression of forms, exaggeration of scales, majestic ensembles, and huge building sizes.

It features powerful proportions, contrasts of closed and open spaces, twisted columns, and dramatic effects, including light coming from the dome above.

For comparison, during the Renaissance in Italy, the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo became major artistic trends that later influenced the development of all Western European classical art.

Its main significance lies not in being an integral artistic style, but rather as a humanistic, enlightenment ideological movement that introduced Russian culture to the achievements of Western European civilization.

She wrote that after Peter the Great's reforms in the early 18th century, "many stages, consistently undergone by other European nations, in Russia often appeared as if spliced, compacted...there were sometimes unexpected combinations of very dissimilar phenomena".

[4] Something similar happened in England, where the historical and territorial separation from continental Europe, combined with the unique English psychology, gave rise to a distinctive 'English style'.

[6] The Baroque style in the northern and eastern regions of Russia is characterised by simplified forms and a tendency towards pictorial piling up of successively smaller volumes.