Gezicht op de rivier de Neva te Sint-Petersburg, gezien tegen de stroom in 1756

Robert Sayer's 'View of the Neva River in Saint Petersburg' offers a glimpse into the 18th-century ambitions of Russia's imperial project. This engraving presents the city as a carefully orchestrated display of power. St. Petersburg, envisioned by Peter the Great as Russia's window to Europe, embodies a dream of modernity imposed on a landscape and its people. The river, teeming with ships, symbolizes trade and military might, integral to Russia's expansionist policies. But who really benefits from this display of progress? The labor and lives of serfs and commoners, conscripted to build and maintain this facade, are conspicuously absent from Sayer’s composition. The clean lines of the architecture and the orderly arrangement of ships present an idealized vision that obscures the social realities of the time. The artwork invites us to consider whose stories are being told and whose are being erased in the grand narratives of imperial progress.