manifestos justifying her accession as a choice of the people over her husband’s
tyranny and oligarchy; she declared herself heir to Peter I’s reform program that
Peter III had disdained. She proceeded to act out the role of traditional Orthodox
autocrat: like Catherine I, she had herself elaborately crowned in Moscow’s Dor-
mition Cathedral; she traveled around the realm visiting monasteries, distributing
alms, and hearing petitions from her people. Vowing to rule“legally,”in 1766 she
invited all of society (save serfs) to consult on a new legal codex. In thefirst decade
or so of her reign, her odists seconded these themes. Her favored odist Vasilii Petrov
praised her as infused with Peter I’s spirit and Lomonosov declared that God
himself had granted Catherine her scepter of power. Petrov and others likened
her to Amazon queens, to Astraea and Dido, even to Caesar Augustus. Odes
praising her victories over the Turks were particularly full of antique references.
Over her long reign, Catherine consciously shifted her self-image, particularly in
the long era of peace and administrative reform from about 1774 into the late 1780s.
Victorious in Turkish wars, confident of her international and domestic power,
inspired by Enlightenment themes of harmony and the pursuit of happiness, she
encouraged her painters and odists to depict a more human, accessible sovereign.
Dmitrii Levitskii’s 1783 portrait of her in the“Temple of Justice,”for example puts
the emphasis on her benevolent rule, and law-giving and the cornucopia of bounty
that they produced. Later he depicted her as an elderly lady strolling with her dog in
the garden, while panegyrics began to downplay the theme of powerful pagan
goddesses, emphasizing the joy and harmony she brings to her people. Gavrila
Derzhavin’scycleof“Felitsa”poems to Catherine (1782–9) even shifted the linguis-
tic register of the ode from high vocabulary and syntax to a middle register and a
conceit of dialogic interchange between the wise ruler Felitsa and her loyal subject
Murza, all to embody Catherine’s engagements with her people.
Most interesting perhaps is the degree to which Catherine dared to shift the
traditional hero-worship of Peter I. She is famous for erecting theBronze Horseman,
Falconet’s dramatic statue of a mounted Peter I bounding towards Sweden
(Figure 13.6). Catherine advised on the design of the statue, insisting that it not
be fussed up with plaques of episodes from Peter’s life and statues of his devoted
comrades, but rather that it exemplify the elemental force he represented by placing
horse and rider on a rough-hewn boulder called“wild”in its day. In doing so, she
subtly contrasted the order and civilization that she brought to Russia with Peter’s
frenzy of creation. She frequently made reference to Augustus Caesar’s comment
that he encountered a Rome constructed in brick and left it made of marble,
bringing beauty and civilization; she pursued this goal literally in urban renewal
around the realm, the impressive sheathing of St. Petersburg’s canals in granite, and
particularly in her classical building projects at the Winter Palace, Marble Palace,
Hermitage Theater, Catherine Palace, and Pavlovsk. Furthermore, she herself
wrote a tale in French that criticized Empress Anna for her cruelties and Empress
Elizabeth for her frivolity, all the better to contrast to her hard-working devotion
to the state; she even allowed Ekaterina Dashkova to publish some mild criticism of
Peter in 1783.
282 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801