This picture shows the very heart of the Kremlin, a square surrounded by cathedrals dating to the 15th and 16th centuries. On the right is the Cathedral of the Dormition where Russian tsars and emperors were crowned, and in the left background is the Cathedral of the Annunciation, which was the family chapel of the rulers of Muscovy. Between them we can see the Palace of Facets that was intended for ceremonial receptions. The domes of the Archangel Cathedral can be seen on the left-hand edge of the picture: this was the burial-vault of many of the Grand Dukes and Tsars of Muscovy from the Rurik and Romanov dynasties (until Peter the Great).

Alexeyev Fyodor

Alexeyev, Fyodor Yakovlevich
1753/1754 (?). St Petersburg - 1824, St Petersburg
Painter, founding father of the Russian school of urbanscape painting. Son of a guard at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Studied fruit and flower and landscape painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1766-73). Awarded a fellowship to Venice (1773-77). Studied under Giuseppe Moretti and Pietro Gaspari. Returned to St Petersburg and worked as a painter for the Imperial Theatres (1799). Copied paintings by Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto for Catherine the Great. Nominated to the Academy (1794). Sketched places visited by Catherine the Great (1787) in south Russia (1795). Painted urbanscapes in Moscow (1800). Councillor of the Imperial Academy of Arts (1802), Taught perspective painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1803-24).

Alexeyev Fyodor. View of the Moscow Kremlin from the Stone Bridge