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Rastrelli's influence on Russian
architecture was enormous and spread throughout the country, where sometimes
inexperienced builders clumsily produced their own "Baroque"
variations and over-decorated very modest one or two story buildings. But
Rastrelli also had hundreds of followers and imitators, some of them trained in
his school, and gradually a new generation of Russian architects was formed.
Among them should be mentioned one of the doyens of Russian architecture, Ivan
Michurin, along with A. P. Evlashev (Yevlashev) who built the bell-tower of the
Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, S. I. Chevakinskii, and Prince D. V. Ukhtomskii,
called by some the "Moscow Rastrelli," primarily because he exercised
considerable influence on Moscow and provincial architecture and established
around the middle of the 18th century, the first Moscow School of Architecture,
in which some talented Russian architects were trained such as P. R. Nikitin,
A. F. Kokorinov etc. For many years Ukhtomskii was in charge of construction
and planning in the city of Moscow. Under his guidance the two top Russian
architects of the second half of the 18th century worked for a while: Bazhenov
and Kazakov. While the West was returning to simpler and more sober classical
forms, Russia needed more time to completely digest the baroque style. Severed
from their tractional native forms, and eager to "Westernize,"
Russian architects would continue to depend on foreign architects and even more
on the adaptation of foreign trends
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