The Secretary's Room
Adjoining the Dressing Room is the Secretary's Room; it was fitted with a mezzanine for the use of Paul I's personal attendant. As it belonged to the suite of state apartments, the Secretary's Room was furnished in mahogany. The furniture, with brass fillets, was of the type introduced by the brothers Jacob (the sons of Georges Jacob), which gained wide popularity towards the close of the eighteenth century. Following Western European fashions, St Petersburg cabinet-makers produced a great many variants of this type which came to be associated with the name of Jacob.
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The Hall of Peace
The Hall of Peace, decorated by Brenna, repeats the layout and general architectural forms of the Hall of War, but is the latter's exact opposite in the motifs of its decor. It is ornamented with emblems of the arts, farming implements, sheaves of grain, basketfuls of flowers or fruit, musical instruments, clusters of grapes, cornucopias, etc.; in other words, attributes typical of the eighteenth-century cult of nature and idealization of rural life, and associated with the idea of peace.
The ornamental pattern of the carved and gilded doors includes a Cupid's bow and a quiver with arrows, the emblems of love. The stove is surmounted by the figure of a peacock (symbol of conjugal fidelity and friendship), and adorned with a lyre, wreaths of wild flowers, and musical instruments suspended from bows. The Hall of Peace opens the suite of state apartments belonging to the Empress Maria Feodorovna. Originally meant to be a state drawing-room, during Paul I's reign it served as the Empress's Presence Chamber, and a Chair of State was installed there, upholstered with silver-embroidered velvet, like the Emperor's in the Hall of War. Antique marble busts of Roman empresses and noblewomen (first - second century) were placed in the niches. The splendour of the hall was accentuated by bronze candelabra on tall gueridons, made in France.
After the fire of 1803 Voronikhin built here a ceiling imitating a vault and ornamented with moulded coffering, replacing the ruined paintings of Brenna. Voronikhin's bas-reliefs present mythological scenes centering around women. The only note of discord in the generally peaceful decor of this hall is struck by the figures of eagles on the cornice, which, though clutching flowers instead of thunderbolts, are still a symbol of might and greatness.
In 1809 here, as in the Hall of War, was placed a large Athenienne, a decorative tazza on a tripod stand, fashioned from Voronikhin's sketches at the St Petersburg Imperial Glass House (the Athenienne in the Hall of War was destroyed by nazi soldiers during the War of 1941-45). Modelled on the bronze altar of classical antiquity, it has a shallow bowl of cut crystal and amber-coloured legs of topaz glass. The Athenienne stands in front of the large plate-glass window, and the play of sunlight on its crystal facets reveals in full measure the beauty of the material and the excellence of the workmanship. Similar Atheniennes with legs of blue crystal adorn the console tables in the Pilaster Room.
At each end of the suite consisting of the three state apartments - the Hall of War, the Grecian Hall and the Hall of Peace - stands a large porcelain vase in underglaze blue, With delicately chased ormolu handles. The classical form of the vases, their beautiful colouring and the fine gold tracery woven over the surface, are all distinctive features by which we identify Sevres porcelain. The vases had been made for Napoleon who, according to tradition, presented them to Alexander I as a diplomatic gesture, when the two emperors met at Tilsit. Equally perfect examples of French craftsmanship are the pair of ormolu lanterns hung, one each, in the Hall of Peace and the Hall of War. Judging by the general character of the design, by the delicacy of the chasing and the excellent quality of gilding, they may well have come from the workshop of Pierre Gouthiere.
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The Library of the Empress
The Library of the Empress Maria Feodorovna is laid out on the same plan as the Tapestry Room. Its rounded wall is adorned with a large Gobelins tapestry Don Quixote Consults the Enchanted Head, one of the-Don Quixote series done by Pierre-Francois Cozette in 1780. The side walls are hung with two Gobelins tapestries woven in the 1770s to the designs of Claude Audran III: Jupiter Representing the Element Fire, and Ceres Symbolizing the Season Summer, from the Curtains of the Gods series, consisting of eight tapestries with allegories of the seasons and the elements. All these tapestries have retained their original brilliance of colour, and this gives them additional charm.
Here, in the Library of the Empress, Just as in that of Paul I, the low book cabinets serve as bases for numerous sculptures. Intended for formal receptions, the room was calculated to impress the visitor with the idea that its mistress patronized art in all its forms. The marble figures of Apollo Citharaedus and The Nine Muses on the book cabinets lining the walls, copies of genuine antiquities preserved in the Vatican, were made by Italian sculptors. The Sleeping Ariadne is also a copy of a Vatican original. An exception is Polyhymnia, an antique Roman sculpture which dates back to the second century AD.
The writing table, created in 1784 by David Roentgen, is remarkable for the skillful use of mahogany of different shades and patterns of graining, for its excellent polish and the fine ormolu and brass decorations which serve to bring out the contours. The armchair at the table, painted in imitation of antique bronze, was designed by Voronikhin. The cornucopias flanking the back were made hollow in the upper part, so as to hold flower-pots: flowers were in great favour in the early nineteenth century.
Well in keeping with the architecture and furnishings of the Library is the chandelier of almond-shaped crystal drops. This chandelier, in the form of a bowl, and its twin in the Tapestry Room, were made in 1804 from the sketches of Voronikhin. The ormolu framework for chandeliers was generally made in the numerous bronzesmiths shops of 5t Petersburg, and the glass and crystal details at the 5t Petersburg Imperial Glass House. The cutting of crystal was done at the Peterhof Factory. The wonderful chandeliers sparkling with all the colours of the rainbow that adorn the halls of the Pavlovsk Palace are the work of 5t Petersburg craftsmen.
In 1967, when the palace was undergoing reconstruction, the inlaid floors of the Library and the adjoining three rooms of the southern suite, ruined by the fire of 1803 and left unrestored, were finally reproduced after fragments preserved from the eighteenth century. These superb, finely designed floors are made of amaranth, rosewood, sandalwood, palm wood and mahogany.
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The Boudoir Of the Empress
The Boudoir of the Empress has, to a large extent, retained the rich architectural decor created by Brenna in the early 1790s. Its walls are decorated with marble pilasters made in Rome and painted with grotesque motifs copied from Raphael's Loggie in the Vatican. The spaces between the pilasters are decorated with eight landscape panels reproducing Indian views, by Thomas Daniell, engraved by Thomas and William Daniell, English landscape painters who had extensively travelled in India.
Of the marble reliefs, two are genuine Roman antiquities dating back to the second century AD. One of these is a half-length portrait of an elderly Roman, the other shows a terminal figure, with a reed-pipe on the pedestal. The oval bas-relief portraits of Alexander the Great and his mother Olympia are eighteenth-century Italian.
The Boudoir's elegant fireplace with a niche decorated with mirrors is set in a portico with two monolithic porphyry columns brought from Rome. The classical portico with a pediment is the compositional centre of the interior. The colourful ceiling with four architectural landscapes, presenting morning, day, evening land night, was painted in 1804 by Giovanni Scotti from his own sketches. And the groups of cupids with wreaths of flowers, topping the door cornice, as well as the gilt ornaments on the door panels, are based on the designs of Voronikhin.
The furnishings of the Boudoir are in perfect accord with its architectural decor. The large vase of porphyry, adorned with chased ormolu, which was made in 1789 at the Kolyvan Factory, and the various other objects in coloured stone which stand on the mantelpiece, harmonize excellently with the porphyry columns of the portico.
The colour of green antique bronze, imitated in the painted-figures on the ceiling, which represent classical sculptures, and on the furniture made in the classical style from Voronikhin's designs, is echoed by the greenish tone of the crystal chandelier shaped like an antique lamp, suspended on long slender chains. Two mahogany secretaires by David Roentgen and a writing-table stamped P. Denizot, a twin of the one in the Study of Paul I, with a revolving-band clock and candlesticks, also deserve to be mentioned. The elegant piano in a marquetry case was made in 1774 in London. It had once stood in the Rose Pavilion in the park, where it was used by many celebrated musicians visiting Pavlovsk; but the Rose Pavilion perished, like so much else, during the war.
A very interesting piece of furniture is a round table with rich ormolu decorations, made at the St Petersburg Imperial Porcelain Factory in 1789. Its top, almost a metre in diameter, is of porcelain; it bears a picture of the Pavlovsk Palace as it looked in the days of Cameron. The firing of so large a slab of porcelain was quite a miracle of technique in those days. Caryatids of white glazed porcelain adorn the legs of the table. The contrast of the brilliant white of the porcelain, the dark hue of the finely patterned burr, and the chased ormolu decorations, make it an object of exquisite beauty. No porcelain factory in the country has produced a comparable piece of furniture ever since.
A clock and candelabra of Sevres porcelain with bronze decorations, a perfume burner of coloured Italian marbles - a gift of the King of Sardinia - and many other remarkable objects complete the decor of this magnificent interior.
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The State Bedroom
The State Bedroom of the Empress was decorated by Brenna in imitation of the royal bedchambers of the kings of France. Unlike the severely classical state apartments, this interior is done in what is known as the Louis-Seize style, in vogue on the eve of the French bourgeois revolution of 1789. The walls are ornamented with light gilded mouldings on a white ground, enframing panels of cream-coloured silk painted in tempera with "rural trophies": fruit, flowers, musical instruments and gardening implements within a border of flower-bedecked trelliswork. These panels, as well as the drapery borders executed in colours of rare brilliance and freshness, were done by Johann Jacob Mettenleiter from the sketches of Willem van Leen of Holland, who worked for the royal court in Paris.
The Bedroom ceiling was painted to harmonize with the decor of the walls. It shows an inside view of a pretty trellised bower covered with roses and other flowers, and against the blue sky in the oval openings, peacocks, the symbol of conjugal happiness.
The furniture of the State Bedroom is a triumph of the cabinet-maker's art. The magnificent gilded bed, beneath a canopy hung with silk draperies, is exquisitely carved with a variety of motifs: basketfuls of flowers, symbolic of abundance, an altar of love over which cupids hold a wreath of roses, greyhounds, symbolic of faithfulness, sphinxes, a symbol of longevity, signs of the zodiac, and other symbols and emblems typical of eighteenth-century art.
Equal perfection of design and craftsmanship marks the dainty Duchesse-type couch and the armchairs with the owners' joined cypher on their backs. This, and a few other sets of furniture made by Henri Jacob for the Pavlovsk Palace, have no analogies in our other museums.
In a hood-case near the window is the famous toilet set made at Sevres in 1782 on the order of Marie Antoinette for a present to Maria Feodorovna.
The set comprises over sixty pieces of "jewelled Sevres" painted in gold over underglaze blue with classical. subjects, and having applied gold decorations of the utmost delicacy, with tiny drops of coloured enamels fused onto the surface to imitate precious stones. This technique was considered at the time to be the last word in the art of porcelain decoration. Of superb craftsmanship is the oval mirror adorned with the figures of the Three Graces in biscuit porcelain. Models for these sculptures and for the playing amorini on the porcelain boxes were made by Louis Simon Boizot, director of sculpture at the Sevres factory. The gold and bronze decorations are the work of Jean Claude Duplessis, goldsmith to the French court, and the jewelling was done by the enameller Joseph Cotteau, the inventor of this technique. This masterpiece which won world-wide fame, cost the royal exchequer 60,000 livres, and no other set like it was made ever since.
The chandelier in the State Bedroom is one of the best works by St Petersburg craftsmen of the period (late eighteenth century). Its light bronze frame seems to melt away amidst the beautifully sparkling festoons of crystal drops full of prismatic colour, whose effect is enhanced by the stem of ruby glass. The use of coloured glass in chandeliers is a distinctly Russian technique.
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The Dressing Room of the Empress
The Dressing Room of the Empress, which terminates the southern suite, is one of the smallest apartments in the palace. It is elegantly ornamented with stucco mouldings, classical bas-reliefs by Ivan Prokofyev, and panels with views of the Pavlovsk Park painted in fresco by Andrey Martynov and Giovanni Scotti. The fine white moulded ornament on a background of pale blue, and the dainty garlands of roses lightly traced on the coffered vaulted ceiling, give a rare charm to this room resembling a piece of Wedgwood ware.
Opposite the balcony door is the end wall of the Picture Gallery. To reduce the unpleasant effect of a surface closing the view, it was painted in fresco with a magnificent portico of a classical building with columns, an inner court and an arch. This illusionistic perspective is the sole surviving fragment of those parts of the original mural decor of the palace, which were painted by Gonzaga.
Remarkable among the furnishings of the room is the dressing-table with a mirror on a box stand flanked by vases, a chair and a footstool, and other objects of Tula steel, decorated with gilded bronze, silver encrustation, and thousands of steel "diamonds", each of them executed individually, faceted and polished, and sparkling like a precious stone. This masterpiece was created in 1788-89 by a craftsman named Semion Samarin. Art objects in steel were produced by the gunsmiths of Tula in their spare time, at home.
The acme of perfection in the technique of cut steel is a small working-table with a footstool, made at Tula in 1801. It consists of more than 10,000 individually forged details forming a fine openwork design, enlivened with blueing, ormolu and gold encrustation. The Pavlovsk collection of cut steel work illustrates the entire range of techniques employed by the Tula craftsmen.
Originally the Dressing Room of the Empress Maria Feodorovna was laid out on the same plan as that of Paul I: it was also an oblong with an apse at each end, embellished with painted panels showing architectural landscapes. When the new state apartments in the southern section of the palace were built, however, Brenna altered the Dressing Room to provide a link between the central and the southern blocks. He made it smaller, using a part of it, together with two other small rooms, to create a new apartment for the ladies-in-waiting in attendance upon the Empress. The decor of this apartment is modest, in keeping with its original function; the walls are faced with white and lightly coloured stucco panels framed with graceful mouldings.
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Room for the Ladies-in-Waiting
The Room for the Ladies-in-waiting contains many specimens of first-class furniture, such as a sofa and armchairs of eighteenth-century Russian workmanship, upholstered in silk with a design of swans and pheasants, woven at the Lazarev textile factory near Moscow; a cylinder-top desk by David Roentgen; and an inlaid commode stamped J. Dautriche. Among the pictures are canvases by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Hubert Robert, Carle van Loo and other eighteenth-century painters.
Remarkable for their fine design are the bronze sconces by Pierre Gouthiere, as is also a clock with a scene from Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny's opera The Deserter, to which a musical box in a case of Karelian birch has been added by Russian craftsmen. The mechanism plays several airs from that opera, popular in the 'eighteenth century.
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The First and Second Anterooms
The First Anteroom - a small apartment of irregular shape, with a kind of screen pierced by an arch - serves to connect Cameron's central building with Brenna's rooms in the southern wing. The walls are decorated with white stucco-work: cornucopias, swags of flowers, rosettes, oval medallions with the figures of cupids, all beautifully set off by the light colouring of the walls. The fireplace faced with white and coloured marble is decorated with an over-mantel mirror in a luxurious carved and gilded frame. On the mantelpiece are porcelain vases produced in the second half of the eighteenth century at the Berlin and Ludwigsburg porcelain factories. The fireplace with its luxurious appointments, strongly contrasting with the austere style of the interior, effectively terminates the perspective which opens hom the Upper or State Vestibule.
An important element of the anteroom's decor are two sculptured groups of patinated bronze: Jupiter on an Eagle and Juno on a Peacock, executed by Michel Anguier from the models of the Italian sculptor Alessandro Algardi, commissioned from him by Diego Velazquez who was acting for King Philip IV of Spain. Another remarkable piece of furniture was a secretaire of finely patterned burr with chased bronze ornaments and a Wedgwood bas-relief plaque depicting a classical scene. The secretaire is the work of Adam Weisweiler, a well- known French cabinet-maker.
The range of apartments built by Brenna over the southern colonnade opens with The Second Anteroom. This anteroom and the similar Third Anteroom, situated at the other end of the curved Picture' Gallery, connect it with the adjoining apartments. The walls of the Second Anteroom are faced with stucco. The ceiling is painted in imitation of stucco mouldings set against a background of gold mosaics. " The niches in the walls are occupied by large porcelain vases made by the craftsmen of the St Petersburg Imperial Porcelain Factory as a gift for Paul I. The unusual shape of the vases, the dark blue colouring, and the graceful gilded figurines of infant satyrs holding wreaths of ivy create a striking decorative effect.
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The Picture Gallery
The Picture Gallery is one of the most remarkable of the interiors created by Brenna. Its great length, its slightly curving shape and the rows of windows on both sides make it highly suitable for the exhibition of pictures. This function dictated an extremely restrained architectural decor: walls painted a light uniform colour, a moulded cornice, and a painted ceiling with three panels executed in oil on can vas.
The subject of the central panel, which is a free version of Guido Reni's famous composition Aurora, or the Triumph of Apollo (now in Rome) and shows Apollo driving a chariot, accompanied by the nine muses, was chosen to emphasize the function of the hall.
Easel paintings played 'an important role in eighteenth-century interior decoration: they were intended to testify to the owners' cultivated taste. Yet pictures were acquired in a casual manner and hung only with an eye to their decorative effect. The dominating role in the Pavlovsk Picture Gallery belongs to large canvases by Italian and Flemish masters, painted expressly for display in palace apartments. The Gallery also contains smaller paintings by celebrated seventeenth-century Dutch masters - genre pieces and landscapes in the realistic manner, such as were generally used to decorate the houses of Dutch burghers. One of the large canvases, Expulsion from Paradise by Luca Giordano, notable for its dramatic colouring and strongly dynamic quality, ranks with the master's best works.
Among the gems of the gallery are the small genre canvases and landscapes by such Dutch masters as Gerard Terborch, Adriaen van Ostade, Jan van Goyen, Philips Wouverman and others, and the still lifes, typical of the Dutch School, by Pieter Claesz, Jan Baptist Weenix, and by Pieter van den Bas whose works are rarely to be seen in the world's art galleries.
Special mention should be made of Rubens's brilliant oil sketch for the painting Lamentation for the Dead Christ (now in the Antwerp Museum).
Many of the gallery's canvases were painted on the orders of the owners of the palace, among them some by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, Angelica Kauffmann, Anton Raffael Mengs, Jules Vernet and Hubert Robert.
On the whole, the selection of canvases by painters fashionable in Western Europe is quite characteristic of the tastes prevailing in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The walls of the Picture Gallery are lined with beautiful vases of coloured stone, in a variety of shapes, produced at the Peterhof, Ekaterinburg and Kolyvan Stone Works. The serf masters who made them had a keen sense of the beauty of the stone, which they revealed through the techniques of their craft. The pink rhodonite with darkish spots, greenish Revniukha (Revnevskaya) jasper, dark brown Korgon porphyry, pale greenish-grey Kaikan jasper, each adds its own touch of colour to the decor of the gallery.
The interior is furnished with carved and gilded furniture, card tables of inlaid wood, crystal chandeliers with stems of blue glass, from the workshop of Pierre Gouthiere, candelabra on tripod stands, of faultless outline, with exquisite bronzework, a clock, etc.
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The Third Anteroom
The Third Anteroom is exactly like the Second in shape and layout. Its walls are faced with stucco and decorated with panels confined by borders of opaque blue glass, painted in oils with floral motiis, and having, in the centre, medallions with classical subjects executed in the same technique. The central panel presents a colourful composition, The Triumph of Amphitrite.
To make the difference in the height of ceiling between this and the next building less noticeable Brenna again resorted to illusionistic perspective. The ceiling was painted by Gonzaga, who created a complex architectural composition showing a lofty classical interior with a dome, extending the architectural space of the room upward, toward an imaginary opening to the sky. Though small, the apartment is decorated like a state drawing-room, with French furniture upholstered in eighteenth-century Lyons silk, made in the workshop of Louis Delanois, the famous cabinet-maker to Mme du Barry and one oi the originators of the classical style in furniture.
The mahogany secretaire of original design, with bronze mountings, was made in 1784 by David Roentgen. Its legs, shaped like paired coiumns of the Doric order, support an architrave with bronze triglyphs. Its drop front is adorned with a medallion of chased ormolu, displaying the attributes of the sciences and the arts. A typical specimen of David Roentgen's work, the secretaire conceals a number of mechanical devices; it has' drawers and various secret compartments opened by pressure on a button or a concealed lever. On the top stands a sculpture of the Three Graces, executed in biscuit from the model of Gottfried Schadow; and also two small vases with wreaths of flowers in biscuit. The three pieces were made at the Berlin Porcelain Factory.
The large porcelain vases of Russian make are similar to those in the Second Anteroom, except that the figures oi the satyrs and the rest oi the sculptural ornaments retain their natural white. The clock on the mantelpiece has the form oi a portico. Fashioned of black and white marble and chased ormolu, it was made at the Parisian workshop of Pierre Augustin Caron, watch-maker to the court, who later became famous as Pierre Beaumarchais,' the author of Le Mariage de Figaro.
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The Grand Hall
The Grand Hall bears the alternative name of Throne Room, as it had once contained a Chair of State. Here Paul I presided over the ceremonies of the Knights of Malta, whose Grand Master he was since 1797. The decoration of the interior had not yet been completed - the gilding of the mouldings and the painting of the ceiling panel still remained to be done when the Chair of State was already installed, under a canopy of embroidered velvet with the imperial arms and the emblems of the Knights of Malta, against the background of a window hung with a drapery of the same fabric.
The Grand Hall was designed by Brenna as an autonomous architectural unit, an isolated block, with great French windows set under arches in all the four walls (the window giving into the adjoining apartment has mirrors instead of glass). The archivolts were supported by caryatids executed from Brenna's sketches by Ivan Martos and Mikhail Kozlovsky, Russian sculptors of note. Destroyed during the war, the figures have been reproduced by Nadezhda Maltseva and Tamara Shabalkina with Professor Igor Krestovsky as artistic advisor.
This hall, the largest in the palace, designed on a square plan, with truncated corners containing niches, each with a stove embellished with mouldings, produces an effect of magnificence and grandeur. The wealth of ornamental stuccowork, the white and gold wall lights of carved wood, the polished mahogany doors with gilded decorations, all add force to this impression.
The decor of the Grand Hall provided a dignified setting for court ceremonies.
The height of the hall was felt to be out of proportion to its length and breadth (the entire area being 400 square metres), yet Brenna was against increasing it in this particular section of the palace for fear of spoiling the proportions of the whole complex. He chose to increase the apparent height of the room by creating, with the help of the trompe-d-oeil technique, an effect of upward perspective movement.
Pietro Gonzaga submitted three versions of a design for a painted ceiling presenting the upper tiers of a splendid classical hall seen in perspective from below, with a colonnaded gallery, balconies, draperies and banners, and endin in a dome with a round aperture through which was seen a blue sky, with white clouds floating in it. But the grandiose project was not destined to be carried out: the death of Paul I cut short the work on the Grand Hall before the painting of the ceiling or the gilding of the mouldings were even begun.
When the work on the restoration of the palace was resumed in 1957, a team of painters under the direction of Anatoly Treskin did the ceiling fresco from the most decorative of Gonzaga's designs, thus completing the architectural decor of the Grand Hall.
Of the art objects decorating the hall, the most important are the great vases of Sevres porcelain, produced in the 1780s. With their exquisite shape, the beautiful colour scheme combining the deep cobalt : .blue ground and the white band with relief figures in ormolu, the delicate chasing and fine gilding of the bronze, these vases rank with the noblest masterpieces of French decorative art.
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The Music Room
Next to the Grand Hall is the modest Music Room, whose walls are painted with classical motifs. It was reserved for the musicians of the court orchestra which performed on such occasions as balls .or public dinners. An ingeniously constructed musicians' table with rising frieze panels incorporating folding racks against which music can be stood, and with a top veneered with a pictorial marquetry with emblems of music, has been preserved. Here, too, are kept two marble monuments by Ivan Martos, dedicated to the memory of Paul I's daughters, who died young, and two works of Mikhail Kozlovsky, an Apollo as Huntsman and Youth on a Rock, both belonging to his early period.
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The Church Gallery
The state apartments of the first floor of the palace, finished and decorated in 1798 by Brenna, terminate in the Church Gallery. Originally conceived as a "hall of antiques" to house ancient Roman statues and cinerary urns, it is lavishly ornamented with stucco mouldings. Relief panels in the classical style, depicting processions, sacrificial ceremonies and bacchanalian dances, adorn the upper part of the walls. Other elements of wall decoration are ornamental cornices, moulded female masks, swags of flowers and panels of the Grecian fret. The pale green of the walls and the ceiling which is painted in grisaille in imitation of stucco-work, add to the unity of the decorative scheme.
"Halls of antiques" of this kind were a common feature of Russia's palaces in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the vogue for classical art, which began after the discoveries at Pompeii, reached its height.
The Pavlovsk collection of ancient Roman sculpture consists mainly of works dating back to the first - third centuries. Most of the statues were acquired in 1782 in Italy, while others came from the famous collection of the Englishman Lyde Browne from whom they were purchased by Catherine II for the Hermitage.
Two Roman statues of the second century AD deserve special mention. One represents Annia Galeria Faustina, the wife of Marcus Aurelius, as Venus; the other is a Resting Satyr, a copy of the famous fourth-century BC sculpture of Praxiteles.
In the early months of the War of 1941-45 all antique and other sculptures were walled up in the basement of the Pavlovsk Palace. Only three statues, too heavy to be moved, remained in the Church Gallery; they were scorched by fire and broken. Two of these, Roman Wearing a Toga and Nymph with a Sea Shell. have since been restored.
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[ Last edited bylizz_7777 at 11-12-2008 01:14 AM ]
The Rossi Room
The Palace Library, created by Carlo Rossi in 1824, completes the suite of state apartments. It is reached from the northern range of rooms through a small, very simply decorated lobby, now known as The Rossi Room. Its furniture, made of poplar and ornamented with delicate gilded carvings from the sketches by. Rossi, came from one of the capital's best workshops. The decor was completed by paintings and bronzes (early nineteenth-century chandeliers, candelabra and a clock).
The Library used to contain over 20,000 volumes covering all fields of knowledge, as well as an important collection of drawings and sketches by the architects who built Pavlovsk. A considerable part of both the library and the collection has been preserved. With time, new bookcases and other equipment will be installed instead of those that perished in the fire. Only the architecture of the Library, and the painted ceiling, have so far been restored. At present the hall is used for temporary exhibitions of the palace art collections. The greatest treasure among the objects on display is a porcelain vase, one of the largest made in the eighteenth century at the St Petersburg Imperial Porcelain Factory. Its graceful shape, the rich tone of the cobalt blue, the beautiful moulded ornaments and the delicate gilding, all bear witness to the high skill of the factory's Russian craftsmen.
A high level of craftsmanship distinguishes the large inlaid cylinder-top desk of Paul I. It is decorated with scenes of the life of Alexander the Great, views of Pavlovsk and delicate ornamentation which covers also the inner surfaces. This piece of furniture is the work of Matvey Veretennikov, a serf owned by Count Saltykov. The same master made the inlaid kidney table with a view of the Pavlovsk Park on the top, showing the Slavianka, and on its banks, the Palace, the Temple to Friendship and other structures which existed at the time.
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[ Last edited bylizz_7777 at 11-12-2008 01:16 AM ]
The Dancing Room
The Dancing Room, like the adjoining Drawing Room, was among the first apartments decorated by Charles Cameron. It is of modest size, having been intended for entertainment on a small scale. The decor of Cameron was rich and refined at the same time. In the walls were large mirrors, rounded at the top, fitted with candelabra of graceful design and embellished with applied decorations in gilded carved wood, shaped as figures of gryphons, floral designs, relief plaques and medallions. The spaces between the mirrors were adorned with round and oval medallions painted by Giovanni Scotti with allegories of the twelve months. In
1802 the mirrors were taken down and replaced with some canvases by Hubert Robert, brought from the St Michael Castle. Later the Dancing Room and the Drawing Room were combined to form the Grand Dining Room.
In 1969 Cameron's original layout and decor were restored, with the exception, however, of the mirrors, for the available drawings and descriptions do not provide sufficient materials for their reproduction. The hall therefore retains the appearance it had in 1802. The walls of the Dancing Room are decorated with a gilded stucco-work frieze of trailing vine and classical vases, and the ceiling with two interlacing stems of ivy, forming an oval. The pink background of the frieze and the pale blue of the walls combine with the white of the ceiling and the gold of the mouldings to give the hall a festive and elegant appearance.
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[ Last edited bylizz_7777 at 11-12-2008 01:17 AM ]
The Old Drawing Room
The decor of the Old Drawing Room, reconstructed from Cameron's sketches, is similar in character to that of the Dancing Room. Its walls are hung with Gobelins tapestries of The Indies series, woven in 1780 by Jacques Neilson from the cartoons of Alexandre-Francois Desportes at the Gobelins Tapestry Works in France. They were also a gift of Louis XVI to the Grand Duke Paul. The Zebra tapestry depicting a leopard attacking a zebra, is symbolic of Asia; another, known as King Carried by Moors, pictures youths bearing an Abyssinian chief; it is an allegory of Africa. The colourful, saturated compositions reflect the artist's idea of the abundance of vegetation and wild life in the parts of the world of which but little was known in those days. Magnificent carved and gilded furniture from the workshop of Henri Jacob, with original coverings embroidered in tambour stitch; a French bronze clock and candelabra; Sevres porcelains and other decorative objects complete this interior typical of the end of the eighteenth century.
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[ Last edited bylizz_7777 at 11-12-2008 01:20 AM ]
The Billiard Room
The decor of Charles Cameron has been best preserved in the Billiard Room, finished in 1786. Laid out on a square plan, it has a slightly raised ceiling imitating a vault, with a large rosette in the centre, an ornamental border, and bas-reliefs of classical subjects in the corners. The walls, divided into panels, are topped by a cornice with a frieze of delicate design. The absence of gilding, mirrors or painting, and a very light, almost white colouring, add to the severely classical style of the interior.
Voronikhin made no alterations in Cameron's decor when reconstructing the Billiard Room after the fire. The walls are hung with canvases by eighteenth-century Italian painters, including several by Michele Marieschi, the rest being old copies of pictures by Antonio Canale (known as Canaletto): views of Venice, with palaces, churches and other beautiful buildings.
The furniture of the Billiard Room includes a table with a large Wedgwood bas-relief plaque showing Diana and Endymion. The card-tables of inlaid wood are remarkable specimens of the work of Russian mid-eighteenth century craftsmen, while the mahogany furniture with brass trimmings was made by St Petersburg cabinet-makers toward the close of the eighteenth century. A piece of special interest is the organ clavichord, a very rare eighteenth-century musical instrument. Its case is ornamented with a pictorial marquetry of musical instruments, an open music book, etc. On the inside of the lid is another inlaid composition of musical instruments, with a sheet of music, in which the notation may be read; it records the beginning of a Russian song. Ordered by Catherine II for Prince Potiomkin, it was made in 1783 at the Gabrahn workshop in 5t Petersburg.
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[ Last edited bylizz_7777 at 11-12-2008 01:23 AM ]
The Dining Room
The Dining Room, which is the largest of the ground-floor rooms, was designed by Cameron; the work of decoration started by him was finished by Brenna. The rhythmic pattern of white fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals on a pale pistachio green background of the walls gives the hall a dignified air. The walls are surmounted by a moulded frieze with acanthus scrolls, classical vases, cupids, lions, etc.
The large oval bay-leaf garland in the centre of the ceiling was intended as a frame for a panel which, however, was never painted. In reconstructing the hall, Voronikhin very tactfully added to Cameron's ceiling decoration a finely designed moulded border harmonizing with the frieze. The lush acanthus that Voronikhin was so fond of, agrees perfectly with Cameron's architectural idiom - an antique ornament in low relief on a delicately coloured background.
The plate-glass French windows of the Dining Room open upon a broad granite stairway leading down to the park. This creates a sense of unity with nature, which is further sustained by landscape panels on the Dining Room walls, depicting park scenery with the waterfall on the Slavianka, the Ruin Cascade in Old Sylvia, the Temple to Friendship and the Peel Tower, painted by the Russian artist Andrey Martynov in 1800.
Many objects in porcelain decorating the interiors record the early period of Pavlovsk, as for example articles made at the St Petersburg Imperial Porcelain Factory and painted after the drawings by Andrey Martynov and his teacher Semion Shchedrin. The medallions on the two companion vases created about 1763, now exhibited in the Dining Room, show the town's first buildings, Paullust and Marienthal, some of the park pavilions and even Cameron's palace in the process of building, with minute figures of workmen on the scaffolding.
Another art treasure exhibited in the Dining Room is the so-called Guryev dinner service of porcelain, with sculptural decorations executed from the models of Stepan Pimenov. It was made between 1807 and 1817 at the St Petersburg Imperial Porcelain Factory.
The Guryev service is remarkable for the subject matter of its painted and sculptural decorations. A work of court art, it evinces a hitherto most unusual interest in the life of the common people. This has an explanation in the history of the country. The War of 1812 against Napoleon, whose armies had invaded Russia, caused a tremendous growth of patriotic feeling among all strata of Russian society. The tall dessert vases of the Guryev service, intended to occupy a prominent position along the central line of the table, are decorated with sculptural figures of peasant girls in Russian national costume. Motifs of Russian country dances are painted on the ice pails, and figures in national costume representing the various peoples of the Russian empire, on the plates. The wine-coolers are embellished with views of Moscow and St Petersburg and their environs, done after the canvases and drawings of such landscape painters as Semion Shchedrin or Fiodor Alexeyev. The deep, rich russet ground tone in combination with gold gives the service an air of splendour and dignity.
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[ Last edited bylizz_7777 at 11-12-2008 01:24 AM ]
The Corner Drawing Room
The Corner Drawing Room, - the former bedroom of Paul I, redecorated in 1816, - was created by Rossi. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the room was remodelled. The restoration of the 1960s, which returned to the room its original aspect, was based on such of the surviving details of Rossi's decoration as were retained in the later version; on Rossi's own coloured drawings; and on some archival documents of his time (accounts and official records of the progress of work).
Since the Drawing Room was intended for official receptions, Rossi gave it an air of formal stateliness characteristic of palace interiors in the early nineteenth century. Here he used coloured stucco, white and gilt mouldings of a severe pattern, ceiling painting in grisaille, etc.
The vivid violet and lilac tones of the stucco panels on the walls form a contrast with the borders painted with ornaments the colour of gilded bronze. The door is of Russian birch with gilded carvings, as is the furniture set made from Rossi's sketches by a St Petersburg cabinet-maker named Johann Boumann. In harmony with the furniture are the draperies of golden-yellow silk with a lilac edging, and of white silk trimmed with yellow.
The bronze clock and candelabra, the chandelier of exquisitely chased bronze and coloured crystal, the vases of porcelain and hard stone modelled from Rossi's sketches, all add to the unity of impression: like Voronikhin, Rossi designed all the furnishings in his interiors. The Corner Drawing Room is a perfect example of the late classical style, expressed most vividly in the works of Rossi.
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[ Last edited bylizz_7777 at 11-12-2008 01:25 AM ]
The New Study
The New Study opens the suite of Paul I's private apartments. It was created, in 1800, by Quarenghi. Both intimate and very elegant, the room is an example of Quarenghi's severely classical style.
The walls are faced with coloured stucco and ornamented with mirrors and panels of natural white marble painted with grotesques. This decor gives to the room an air of dignity. The exquisite colour scheme is enriched by coloured prints set into the walls. Executed by Giovanni Volpato, they show the frescoes painted by Raphael and his pupils in the stanzas of the Vatican: Parnassus, School of Athens, Fire in the Borgo and other compositions.
The mahogany furniture with ormolu decorations comes from the workshop of David Roentgen. The cylinder-top desk at the west wall and the writing- and reading-table with a rising top, "at which one can write either sitting or standing", in the words of an old inventory, are interesting examples of furniture decorated with severe simplicity, yet comfortable in construction and well suited for deskwork.
On the table stands a writing-set in coloured marble, chased ormolu and patinated bronze. This set composed of an inkstand, a sand box and two candlesticks, each in the form of a cannon or a mortar supported by cupids, was "made from the models by Jean Antoine Houdon originally created by him for the Chesme writing-set which had been ordered by Catherine II to celebrate the brilliant victory at Chesme in 1770. Other first-class specimens of French bronzework are a clock with the figure of a bacchante, a pair of candelabra, and fire-dogs, decorating the fireplace of black and white marble, of eighteenth -century Italian workmanship.
Three large blue porcelain vases with gilding and portrait medallions stand on the console table in front of the mirror. They are rare presentation pieces fashioned at the Ludwigsburg factory of the Duke of Wurtemberg.
A handsome crystal and blue glass chandelier of late eighteenth-century Russian workmanship completes the decor of the New Study.
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[ Last edited bylizz_7777 at 11-12-2008 01:26 AM ]