Our Notes & References

Fine architectural views and plans of some of the best known buildings and monuments of St. Petersburg, all designed by Thomas de Thomon in the Imperial capital, including the St. Petersburg Theatre and the Stock Exchange on the spit of Vasilyevsky Island. It also includes other buildings, such as the Odessa Theatre, entirely destroyed by fire in 1873.

The French architect Jean-François Thomas de Thomon (1760–1813) was trained at the Académie dʹArchitecture in Paris and later attended classes at the French Academy in Rome. During his time in Vienna he got acquainted with the Russian ambassador to Vienna, Prince Dmitrii Golitsyn, whose brother Alexander invited Thomas de Thomon to work for him in Moscow in 1798. When the architect had completed works for the Golytsins in their country residences, he relocated to Saint Petersburg, where in 1802 he was hired by the Imperial government to rebuild Bolshoi Kamennyi Theatre.

Thomas de Thomon introduced in Russia the high classicism, and became a protagonist of Russian Neoclassicist architecture, particularly in Saint Petersburg.

Uncommon: we could trace only one copy sold through auctions in the past 50 years.