the early 18th century, but had not been as apparent over the period of time where the baroque style was most prevalent. While a departure from the baroque into the neoclassical style was already in place before Catherine the Great's reign, it flourished under her rule. She had a great passion for architecture, evident in her letters to her advisor on cultural matters, and remarked on her dislike of the baroque extravaganza of Elizabeth's preferred style, thinking it as disorderly and lacking in rationality. The neoclassical under Catherine was especially French in style, partly because of the two main architects in the time, Vallin de la Mothe (French and trained in France and Italy) and Alexander Kokorinov (studied with Korobov and Ukhtomskii in Moscow) who had francophile sympathies. In comparison to the extravagance of the Winter Palace, de la Mothe and Kokorinov's design for the Academy of Arts was an example of classical simplicity. The building’s facade and its five part division drew from the model established by Le Vau, Perrault, and Le Brun on the Louvre, while using modest pilasters to define the middle sections. The exterior also lacks the bichromatic scheme of the earlier styles present in St Petersburg, instead using colours that mimicked simple a simple stone facade. The rest of the facade also lacks in decoration, instead being a showcase of neoclassical rationalism and uses the first example of “proper” entablature in Russian architecture. Vallin de la Mothe would go on to design the Small Hermitage (1764-1775) to house Catherine the Great’s art collection, furthering the use of simplicity in neoclassicism with detached, austere columns and a muting of the vivid colours of the rest of St Petersburg’s colours. After Catherine, the imperial building tradition would continue under Alexander I, who favoured the neoclassical Empire style of architecture, as was popular during the period, and continued the French influence in the architecure of the time. The architect Andrei Nikiforovich Voronikhin was a pupil of Wailly in Paris and would design the Virgin of Kazan cathedral in St Petersburg (1801-1811) and boasted a domed center flanked by quadrant colonnade. The Greek revival style is also apparent in his design for the Academy of Mines (1806-1811) which has a decastyle portico of Paestum Doric columns. Another architect, the frenchman Thomas de Thomom would design the Grand Bolshoi theatre (1802-1805, destroyed 1813) and modeled it after the Theatre-Francais in