Andreas Roller was an outstanding German and Russian painter of perspective views and theatrical scenery, academician and professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Born in 1805, in Regensburg, Bavaria, into a family of a theatrical machinist, he received his art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, simultaneously studying theatrical painting, perspective, and stage machinery construction. He worked in theaters across Austria and Germany, and in Berlin collaborated with the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who greatly influenced his work. In 1833, Roller was invited to Saint Petersburg as a decorator and chief machinist of the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres, a position he held until 1879. He designed scenery for over 200 theatrical productions, including the ballets "La Sylphide" (1835), "Giselle", "Le Corsaire" (1858), "The Little Humpbacked Horse", "The Pharaoh's Daughter", and the operas "Askold's Grave" (1841), "A Life for the Tsar" (premiered in 1836, opening of the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre). As an experienced technician, Roller participated in the reconstruction of the stage of the Saint Petersburg Bolshoi Theatre (1836), the Winter Palace (1838), and the repair of the stage machinery at the Hermitage Theatre (1856). The Bakhrushin Theatre Museum's online collection holds set design sketches by Andreas Roller for productions at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre.