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The Great Northern Expedition

In the 1700s, Russia's rulers funded an expedition to Siberia and beyond--to the mysterious North American coastline of what would later become Alaska. Ambitious in scope and incredibly lengthy in time commitment, the Great Northern Expedition was ultimately doomed and largely lost to history. Italian artist Maria Cristina Pritelli here reimagines it through the eyes of the young son of Sven Waxell, second-in-command to the famous Danish captain Vitus Bering. Pritelli's cinematic landscapes and attention to both historical and natural detail imbue the fateful voyage with a subtle beauty that makes it easy to consider the appeal such a mission of discovery would have had centuries ago.