For her dictionary of comparative languages, Catherine wrote Thomas Jefferson for help translating several hundred words in the Shawnee and Delaware Indian languages George Washington contributed a translation of Cherokee and Chocktaw words.īy the end of Catherine the Great’s reign, the personal library she’d started as a grand duchess had mushroomed into an encyclopedic 44,000 volumes. The Hermitage Library’s shelves also included Catherine’s own publications - poems, chronicles, memoirs, plays, opera librettos, magazine articles, fairy tales, a treatise on Siberia, history of the Roman emperors, and a six-volume Notes on Russian History. Six months into the project, Catherine wrote: “The slightest indigestion of the Holy Father sends me into agonies, for a conclave would delay the work tremendously.” Catherine modeled the Hermitage Library after the Vatican’s, and symbolically moved her book collection below the new Raphael Loggia. She couldn’t have her biblical scenes soon enough. After seeing an exquisite book of engravings by Giovanni Volpato of the Vatican’s Raphael Loggia, Catherine ordered an exact replica for the Winter Palace (see image at right). Installed at her favorite summer getaway, Tsarskoe Selo, Catherine’s architecture collection proved a valuable resource for her designers, Charles Cameron and Giacomo Quarenghi.Ĭatherine’s books inspired many of her art commissions. They fill my room and even that is not enough,” wrote the armchair traveler about her trove featuring works by Andrea Palladio and Giovanni Piranesi. “I am passionately interested in books on architecture. Of the many genres she amassed, it’s no surprise that Russia’s art-loving empress prized art and architecture books. Among the art critic’s 2,904 volumes was the only uncensored copy of his masterpiece, Encyclopédie, which Catherine called “indispensable.” When Diderot died six years later, his books were installed beside those of Voltaire. In 1779, twelve large crates containing his 6,760 volumes were unpacked in the Oval Room of the Winter Palace. To seal the 30,000 ruble deal with Voltaire’s niece and heir, Catherine threw in diamonds, furs, and a jeweled box with her portrait. As she did with Old Master paintings, Catherine II snagged entire libraries, including those of French philosophes Voltaire and Denis Diderot.

A voracious reader, Catherine assembled a large personal library reflecting her broad interests - from history, philosophy and politics to science, travel and art.

As an unhappily married grand duchess, the future Catherine the Great put her “eighteen years of boredom and seclusion” to good use.

The Empress of Art by Susan Jaques