Catherine the Great – VISUAL SOURCES

Posted onAuthorQueenie Chan

The unfortunate thing about Catherine the Great, at least when it comes to TV and or movie adaptations, is that the most famous ones tend to be from Hollywood. Since the most accurate depictions of historical figures are always going to be by state-owned TV stations from their country of origin, expect any English-language adaptations of Catherine’s story to be historically inaccurate.

I can’t be bothered to list any non-Russian productions, but luckily, there are two Russian-language TV series that is worth watching (not least because some of these will be filmed at actual historical locations such as the Winter Palace and Oranienbaum). The first is Ekaterina (2014), made by state-owned Russia-1, which as of this article has 3 season that cover most of Catherine’s reign. The other is Catherine the Great (2015), broadcast on Channel One Russia, also a state-owned TV channel, with 2 seasons.

It’s not easy finding English subtitled versions for these two series, but clips on Youtube abound. Here are some samples from both series.

This is a trailer for Season 2 of Ekaterina (2014), you can find short clips from the show on Youtube.
This is a trailer for “Catherine the Great” (2015), also known as “Великая” (2015) in Russian. This is the series I watched and used for historical references, and I rather like this series though English subtitled options are impossible to find.

Apart from TV series, there are many portraits of Catherine the Great and various courtiers that was painted in her time. There are also a number of paintings from her era that depict her doing certain things, and a number of her gowns have also been preserved by the Russian State Heritage Museum. Countless photos of these can be found online.

There are multiple portraits of Catherine’s coronation, some which are copies of each other. This one is by Vigilius Eriksen (1745).
Early portrait of Catherine when she was still Grand Duchess, by Georg Christoph Grooth (1745)
A Portrait of Catherine II, by Dmitry Levitzky (1782).
Here are some portraits of Catherine’s courtiers, including her former husband Peter III, his tutor Nikita Panin, and her later lover and advisor, Grigory Potemkin.