Grigorii Chernetsov, Russian Artists in Rome, 1842

ADHT lecturer Margaret Samu recently received a grant for research travel, the Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society (https://www.amphilsoc.org/grants/franklin). Samu will use it this June and July to conduct research in Moscow and St. Petersburg, on a project titled “Russian Artistic Rivalries in Rome, 1815-1848.” From the end of the Napoleonic Wars until the revolutions of 1848, young Petersburg-trained artists traveled to Rome to extend their training and burnish their credentials. Working amid the international artistic community in Rome could help them to signal their professional status and cosmopolitan identity to the audience back home; this westernized image would boost their career in Russia. Professor Samu’s project focuses on artists’ attempt to surpass their rivals’ successes in painting and sculpture. She will be working in libraries, museums, and archives in Russia to conduct primary source research that is not possible in the U.S.