Carl Wilhelm Rabus depicts the Spassky (Saviour) Gates in one of the towers guarding the entrance to the Moscow Kremlin. Built in the fifteenth century and rebuilt in the seventeenth century, the turret was named in honour of a miracle-working icon of the Saviour.
The artist paints the tower at night, when the enigmatic and romantic moonlight lends a sense of solemn majesty to the medieval citadel. Two chapels with icons of the Saviour (right) and Mother of God Hodigitria (left) stand before the gates. An icon-lamp burns above the gates, while figures genuflect in the foreground. Flask and stopper. 1830s Underglaze and overglaze designs, paste and gilding on porcelain 23 (with lid) x 7.8 x 7.8

Rabus Karl Wilhelm

Rabus, Carl Wilhelm
1800, St Petersburg - 1857, Moscow
Painter, landscapist. Son of a German tutor at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Studied under Mikhail Ivanov at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1810-21). Graduated with a second gold medal. Travelled across the Ukraine and Crimea. Academician for View of Gurzuf in the Crimea (1827). Visited Turkey, Greece and Germany (1827). Lived in Moscow. Taught perspective painting at the Kremlin Palace School and the Constantine Institute of Boundary Engineers. Professor of landscape painting at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Had many students.