Shchedrin, Feodosii

Born 1751 in St. Petersburg; died there Jan. 19 (31), 1825. Russian sculptor. Brother of Semen F. Shchedrin.

Shchedrin studied with N. F. Gillet at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1764 to 1773. He studied in Florence and Rome from 1773 to 1775 and in Paris from 1775 to 1785 on a stipend from the academy. In 1794, Shchedrin became an academician and an instructor at the academy; he was made rector in 1818.

Although his early work was baroque in tradition (for example, his dynamic Mars, gypsum, 1776, Scientific Research Museum of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, Leningrad), Shchedrin had become one of the foremost masters of Russian classicist sculpture by the late 1770’s. His free-standing works are characterized by classical clarity, elegance, and subtle modeling (Sleeping Endymion, bronze, 1779; Venus, marble, 1792—both in the Russian Museum, Leningrad). A master of monumental decorative sculpture, Shchedrin attained an organic interdependence of the decorative and representational—a true synthesis of arts—particularly evident in the heroic and deeply patriotic sculptural ornament of the Admiralty in St. Petersburg (the figures on the colonnade of the central tower, three figures on the cornice wall, and the two groups of sea nymphs; limestone, 1812–13). Shchedrin also did a number of portraits, for example, N. I. Panin (bas-relief, marble, 1794, Historical Museum, Moscow) and A. A. Nartov (marble, 1811, Russian Museum, Leningrad).