In 1756 he fled from his wife to Italy, and two years later set out for Russia.
1758
Arrival in Russia
In 1758, at the invitation of Count I. I. Shuvalov, he arrived in Russia with a group of artists to work at the newly founded Academy of Arts; he lived and worked in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where two of his brothers and a sister were already living.
1758–1762
Travels in Finland, Lithuania, and Siberia
During his five years in Russia he traveled through Finland, Lithuania, and Siberia (according to some scholars, only as far as Kazan); on the empress's instructions he made sketches of "Russian types."
