Franz Roubaud (Russian: Франц Алексеевич Рубо, romanized: Franc Alekseevič Rubo; French: François Iwan Roubaud; 15 June 1856 – 13 March 1928) was a Russian painter of French origin[5] who created some of the largest and best known panoramic paintings.

He created circular paintings, exposed on a cylindrical surface and viewed from the inside at a lookout point.

Franz was the fourth of five children in a Catholic family; his father was a bookseller and stationer, originally from Marseille.

[7] He then settled in Saint Petersburg, working in the Imperial Academy of Arts and painting huge panoramas of historical battles.

The size of the painting is enormous, but it was a necessity for the realistic depiction of military scenes because of the huge number of participants and the wide sweep of the scenery.

He kept working on the painting later at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts where he decided to use a canvas 14 m high by 115 m long.