Baroque as a crossroads of meanings and a space of metamorphoses (part 2: Moscow and St. Petersburg baroque)

The relevance of studying the artistic language of the Baroque lies in the fact that for the modern postmodern concept of art, based on the idea of the “synthesis of arts” of the early twentieth century and based, among other things, on the game element, the problem of the interdependence of written and visual cultures, and the mechanism of transformation of artistic styles and forms are still interesting. Based on this, the Baroque with its installation to show the fluidity of life and the variability of the surrounding world is one of the best examples. The article notes that the desire of the people of the XVII century to integrate into the historical process, to determine their place in it, echoes the problems of modern society, experi-encing a sense of a break in the flow of history and historical continuity, wondering about the “end of history” (F. Fukuyama), trying to understand the causes of the gap and engaged in the search for ways to level it, building possible futurological models. The author examines the peculiarities of the existence of Baroque in Russia in the 1660s 1720s. The specificity of Baroque culture in Russia is due to the fact that its various regional European variants acted as landmarks: in the period of Ancient Russia the Eastern European line, in which there was a connection of two branches of culture Catholic and Orthodox (S. Polotsky, S. Medvedev, E. Slavinetsky E. Chudovsky, etc.); during the reign of Peter I, the Northern European version (or rather, ScandinavianEnglish) began to dominate, while Elizabeth Petrovna’s choice fell on the Italian French branch, perhaps the most magnificent and brilliant of all.