Вестник Екатеринбургской духовной семинарии (Oct 2024)
On the History of Creation of the Title Page and Frontispiece of the Elizabethan Bible (According to Documents of the Synod Office and the Office of the Academy of Sciences)
Abstract
The Elizabethan Bible (after the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna) is commonly referred to as the Bible which was revised in preparation for a new edition and first published in Saint Petersburg in 1751. A few months before the Bible was released, the Engraving Chamber of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences received two orders from the Holy Synod to create illustrations. The history of creation of the copperplate engravings can be traced with several sources: materials from the Office of the Synod (Russian State Historical Archive); materials from the Office of the Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the RAS); a published document of 1878 compiled by the Commission for the Holy Synod Archive “O napechatanii novoispravlennoi Slavianskoi Biblii” (in Russian). According to the Commission Report published in 1878 and containing generalized conclusions, one can mistakenly believe that works on the title page, frontispiece and the set of illustrations of the Bible (consisting of forty-nine engravings) were being performed at the Drawing and Engraving Chambers of the Academy of Sciences at the same time. It caused confusion in subsequent publications. This article is to clarify, on the basis of previously unpublished documents of the Office of the Holy Synod and Office of the Academy of Sciences, the details of the work of artists and engravers on these two separate orders from the Synod. The order dated November 28, 1750, involved the production of forty-nine subject engravings on Old Testament plots, and the order of September 16, 1751 required copperplate title page (containing a complex symbolic and allegorical program) and frontispiece with a full-length portrait of Empress Elizabeth. The first edition of this Bible (published in St. Petersburg on December 18, 1751) included two engravings from the order dated September 16, 1751, and only one plot composition of the expected forty-nine (from the order dated November 28, 1750).
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