MARTOS, Ivan Petrovich

Ukrainian sculptor, active in Russia. He was the son of an impoverished landowner and studied at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg from 1764 to 1773 under Louis Rolland (1711-91) and Nicolas-François Gillet. Between 1773 and 1779 Martos completed his education in Rome under Carlo Albacini (active 1770s-1800) and adopted the Neo-classicalGLOSSARYRelating to the culture of ancient Greece and Rome (classical Antiquity). The classical world played a profoundly important role in the Renaissance, with Italian scholars, writers, and artists seeing their own period as the rebirth (the "renaissance") of classical values after the Middle Ages. The classical world was considered the golden age for the arts, literature, philosophy, and politics. Concepts of the classical, however, changed greatly from one period to the next. Roman literature provided the starting point in the 14th century, scholars patiently finding, editing and translating a wide range of texts. In the 15th century Greek literature, philosophy and art - together with the close study of the remains of Roman buildings and sculptures-expanded the concept of the classical and ensured it remained a vital source of ideas and inspiration. style. He returned to Russia in 1779 and began to teach in the sculpture class at the Academy of Arts, where, in 1794, he became Senior Professor and in 1814 Rector of Sculpture.

As a sculptor, he specialized in funerary monuments set up in cemeteries and church interiors, and he was the pioneer of the genreGLOSSARYIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature. in Russian sculpture. However, he produced his masterpieceGLOSSARYA term now loosely applied to the finest work by a particular artist or to any work of art of acknowledged greatness or of preeminence in its field. Originally it meant the piece of work by which a craftsman, having finished his training, gained the rank of'master' in his guild. in monumental sculpture, the Monument of Minin and Pozharsky, erected on the Red Square in Moscow.