Unlike the former Russian Baroque styles such as
Petrine Baroque, the Elizabethan Baroque tended to appreciate the
Muscovite Baroque, and maintained the very essence of Russian architectural elements like the five cupolas shaped like
onions. The Elizabethan Baroque tended to create the architecture of grandeur in order to glorify the might of the Russian Empire. Rastrelli designed majestic palace complexes in
Saint Petersburg and its environs: the
Winter Palace, the
Catherine Palace, and the
Peterhof Palace. These palaces are characterized by gigantic proportions, golden splendour decorations, the use of two or three shades of colour for their façades, the refinement added by their gilding, give these buildings a particular style. The festive character of Rastrelli's work left its mark on all the
Russian architecture of the middle of the eighteenth century. His most spectacular work is the
Smolny Convent in St. Petersburg, the model he had made demonstrates the ambition of the original project that was not completed: the immense pyramidal steeple was never built. Rastrelli was influenced by the French architects
Germain Boffrand and
Robert de Cotte; the great architects of Central Europe, from
Balthasar Neumann (
Würzburg) to
François de Cuvilliés (
Munich), from
Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann (
Dresden) to
Fischer von Erlach (
Vienna,
Salzburg); the monasteries in Moscow; not to mention the reminiscences of
Gian Lorenzo Bernini and
Italian Baroque. He adapted the Italian Baroque taste to the immensity of the landscape of St. Petersburg, his art is made of an amalgam of all these styles, which he has managed to transcend into an original synthesis, more Russian than European. Apart from some interiors, it is not quite correct to regard this style as
Rococo; for example, the fronts of the Winter Palace by Rastrelli, with exuberant coloured
stuccos marked by mighty
colonnades and delicate window openings, possess the solidity of the mature Baroque rather than the curvilinear lightness of the Rococo. The Elizabethan Baroque style is also found in the works of Muscovite architects of the mid-eighteenth century, particularly those of
Dmitry Ukhtomsky and
Ivan Fyodorovich Michurin. In St. Petersburg, with the empress
Elizabeth Petrovna, a host of architects competed in the realisation of palaces: ,
Savva Chevakinsky,
Andrey Kvasov, among others. The Swiss architect
Pietro Antonio Trezzini was the specialist in the field of religious buildings. With the exception of some constructions by Andrey Kvasov,
Antonio Rinaldi,
Johann Gottfried Schädel and Rastrelli's
Saint Andrew's Church in Kyiv, the style is rarely seen in
Ukraine. After the death of the empress Elizabeth Petrovna, the construction orders were passed to Antonio Rinaldi, who had previously worked for the small courtyard of the
Oranienbaum Palace. He refused to imitate the grandiose achievements of Rastrelli and introduced the Rococo style into the architecture of the court. In the years following 1760, Rinaldi, like other renowned architects, abandoned the
Baroque style and turned to the aesthetics of
Classicism. == Gallery ==