The first day that Bakst, attired in his new green uniform, wended his way along the granite embankment toward the Academy and, having passed under the eyes of the two Sphinxes from Thebes with a hundred gates which guard the sanctuary, decided to enter, his astonishment and his proud ecstasy knew no bounds. However, despite the grand pretense of a temple, the Imperial Academy of 1890 was a rather curious institution. The academic instruction which flourished at the beginning of the century, maintained its power and authority until the close of Nicholas I’s reign. But from 1863 on it was badly shaken by the famous secession of the “Thirteen”, with Kramskoi at the head. These thirteen later became the first “wanderers”; they were destined to herald the arrival of a certain humanitarian realism closely related to the teachings of Proudhon and of Courbet. They professed the haughtiest contempt for disinterested pictorial beauty, for mere virtuosity, yes, even for sound craftmanship based upon traditional experience. Among the “pompiers” classicism had degenerated into hackneyed copying; teaching became vulgar pedantry. Among the revolutionaries classicism was the complete and absolute negation of art, admitted only as a function of social apostleship. But the younger artists had public opinion behind them, which hailed the catastrophe as a liberation. Yet for thirty years the Academy, powerful solely because of its official authority, continued to stick to the past and to live outside the pale of a throbbing artistic life. Not until 1893 did the “wanderers”, led by Makovsky and Repine, enter the citadel in order to establish a bold and frank dilettantism while still respecting the remnants of the old Academy. At that time Bakst had already broken with his first masters; we shall soon see why. Let us first, however, briefly complete the history of the institution on the Nicholas Embankment. Toward 1910 a reaction set in against the anarchy of the “wanderers” and in favor of a classic revival, of a rehabilitation of craftmanship. This movement was of short duration, however, for the October Revolution abolished the Academy and established <g>free studios</g> upon its ruins, the management of which was placed in the hands of artists who supported the Communist regime. On the day of its death the Russian Imperial Academy was more than 150 years old.