Kazan Architectural Heritage in the Nineteenth-Century European Discourse: Artistic Interpretation in the Works of the British Edward Turnerelli and the French Andre Duran

Abstract

The tradition of visualizing the country through the artistic views of its cities came to Russia along with the spread of European values and culture in it. In the 18th century, these visual practices, which served the purpose of representing the empire, were carried out through government-sponsored expeditions. In the 19th century of travel, lithographs of urban images became a mass phenomenon. Their demand contributed to the development of private initiatives to create albums with "views" that introduced the viewer to distant and unknown cities. In this regard, Russia was of great interest to Europeans. “Russia is less well known than India, it was less described and less often painted,” wrote the French traveler Astolfe de Custine in his famous book “Russia in 1839”. All the more unknown and mysterious for them was Kazan, about which little was known even in Russia itself. The focus of this article is the graphic images of Kazan and its surroundings, captured by the Englishman Edward Turnerelli and the Frenchman André Durand in the second half of the 1830s. at the height of Europe's interest in its Christian outskirts and marvelous Muslim East. Urban views, mainly used as illustrations for architectural and urban planning processes, became the subject of the research aimed at "reading" the visual text created by European graphic artist, and understanding how they constructed a local architectural image, while presenting Kazan to their European viewer, the world and Russia itself.