Westernization through art? #history #arthistory

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Take a very good look at these two portraits and tell me whether they are from the same time period. Well, both of them are actually of one person, Peter the Great or Peter the First. He was the ruler of Russia in the late 1600s and early 1700s, but when he came to power, first he was ruling over a conservative, traditional Russia, which was sort of isolated culturally from the rest of Europe. It was lagging behind Europe.

[00:00:30]So, he came in and he said, "We have to westernize." So, he made a ton of reforms. He reformed literally every aspect of life in Russia. And as part of that, he made the country more western by introducing this western style of artwork. So, when you see his early portraits, they are painted in the traditional Russian painting style, while his later portraits are painted in a more western style, which produces this effect where you can't believe that these two portraits are of the same person.