Chronologically organized and covering a period of ten centuries, from the eleventh to the twenty-first, the course has a special focus, the rendering of space and perspective. Beginning with the so-called “reverse perspective” of Russian Icons and the devotional world of churches and cathedrals, continuing with the geometrically organized, rational space of the 18th century and St. Petersburg, and moving on to the distorted reality of the Russian avant-garde and Socialist Realism’s attempt at reproducing reality “as it is,” the course concludes by asking where this oscillating acceptance and rejection of illusion leaves us in the 21st century. Consideration of paintings, buildings, sculptures, selected literary texts and films.