5o RUSSIAN CULTURE
interested in recording on canvas the magnificent buildings and
French "perspective" gardens which they had erected and planned.
Thus the first task of a landscape painter was a purely topographi-
cal one, for he had either to represent accurately in "perspective
painting," as Peter the Great had called it, panoramas of streets,
palaces, and country manors, or record the designs made for the
elaborate transparencies used for the display of fireworks on sol-
emn occasions. The art of engraving was of great assistance in the
performance of this task.
By its very nature an engraving was always more within the
reach of the masses than a painting. In Russia it had been popular
from early times in the form of a primitive woodcut (lubofy. Even
during the late part of the seventeenth century the Friaz plates,
that is, foreign engravings, could be bought in Moscow at a very
low price. Peter the Great learned to engrave "with a style and
aquatint under the guidance of Adrian Schoonebeck of Amster-
dam,** reads the inscription on an etching done by him and dated
1698. Since his time the art of engraving has prospered in St. Pe-
tersburg. "Illuminated News about Monsters," "Illuminated An-
nouncement of Military Campaigns," and the like, repkced
newspapers for the masses, while numerous etchings, sold at
popular prices, reproduced all the favorite themes of Russian folk-
lore. The art of engraving was used also to popularize the new
architecture. Several young Russians studied engraving with
Schoonebeck, and one of them, Zubov, made etchings of buildings
erected by Peter I in St. Petersburg. It was during the reign of this
monarch that Wortmann came to Russia and taught the engrav-
ing of portraits until 1745, when he ceded his place to his best
pupil Ivan Sokolov, the "master of portrait etching," who had
made the illustrations for the Description of the Coronation of the
Empress Elizabeth* Makhaev, the "master of maps and perspective
painting," was the most outstanding of Sokolov's pupils, and is
known through series of views he engraved of St. Petersburg.
Schmidt, the third foreign engraver, headed that art in Russia
during the second half of the eighteenth century, and when he left
the country his tradition was upheld by Chemesov, who was con-
sidered most gifted among his pupils. It was due no doubt to the