On November 3, the V.V. Nabokov Museum of St. Petersburg State University held the opening of the exhibition “Bosphorus Shores from the Neva Banks” with engravings by Antoine-Ignace Melling from a private collection.

The project was implemented with the support of the Consulate General of the Republic of Turkey in St. Petersburg and Rencons.

The exhibition will be open from 4 to 26 November 2022.

Antoine-Ignace Melling was a German-French painter, architect and interior decorator. He became famous for his views of Istanbul, where he lived for 18 years. For many years he was the court architect of Sultan Selim III and his half-sister Hatice Sultan.
Melling was rightly called “the unsurpassed painter of the Bosporus”, Istanbul is depicted as a “Paradise on Earth”. The result of Melling’s work was a lot of detailed, photographically accurate images of Istanbul and its environs, Sultan’s palaces, everyday scenes from the life of Ottoman society.