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State Russian Museum, Mikhailovsky Palace (Saint Petersburg)

4 Inzhenernaya Street, Saint Petersburg (tel.: + 7 812 595-42-48, + 7 812 314-83-68, + 7 812 314-34-48), Metro stations: "Gostiny Dvor", "Nevsky Prospekt".

http://www.rusmuseum.ru

The history of the Mikhaylovsky Palace (the Palace, for short) started when Grand Duke Mikhail, a son of Emperor Paul I, was born 1798. On this occasion, Paul I ordered to set aside several hundreds of roubles each year for future construction of a palace for his youngest son; the palace was supposed to match in sumptuousness and comfort the grandeur and taste of the imperial family.

The august father did not live to see his design implemented: in three years, his life and reign were tragically and prematurely cut off by a palace coup. However, the will of the emperor was duly executed: the money was regularly set aside. When Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich turned 21 and the saved amount reached 9 millions, the construction of the Palace started.

On 17th April 1819, Emperor Alexander I, the elder brother of Mikhail Pavlovich, laid a stone container filled with silver coins in the foundation of the new palace and put a silver commemorative plaque.

Carlo de Rossi (1775–1849) designed and constructed the Palace. Rossi was a genius architect who created the most notable architectural ensembles in the Empire style that completed the development of the Saint Petersburg centre, in the second and third decade of the 19th century. It is these ensembles that set the architectural scale and rhythm that match the wide expanse of the Russian plains, "Neva's sovran waters" (as Pushkin wrote) and the long chain of low clouds over the "northern capital" of Russia, Saint Petersburg.

The urban complex centred at the Mikhaylovsky Palace is a true gem among Rossi's creations. Here, the architect managed to achieve the highest degree of harmonic match between the palace building and its landscape and architectural environment. By radically redesigning the vast space (which before had only partially been built up with wooden greenhouses of the Third Summer Garden adjacent to the Mikhaylovsky Castle of Paul I), Rossi managed to connect (with Mikhaylovskaya Street) the square in front of the Mikhaylovsky Palace with Nevsky Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Saint Petersburg. Thereby, Rossi created an amazingly spectacular view on the main palace facade featuring a slim and elegant eight-column, Corinthian portico.

The opposite facade, which faces the Mikhaylovsky Garden, is at least as beautiful, even though less famous. It remarkably matches the state solemnity of the palace with the smallness of the park structure, the harmonic proportion of all its parts with the superb, somewhat heavy monumentality, which reminds of the influence of the architect Vincenzo Brenna, Rossi's mentor and teacher, who constructed the Mikhaylovsky Castle for Paul I.

Having visited Russia in 1826, the British scientist Granville wrote: "This palace is undoubtedly a triumph of modern architecture. It not only surpasses everything I have seen at the Tuileries Palace and other royal palaces of the Continent, but it is also definitely unique of its kind."

Many outstanding artists were involved in creating the sculptured, painted, moulded and carved decorations of the Palace: the sculptors Vasily Demuth-Malinovsky and Stepan Pimenov; the painters P. Scotti, Giovanni Batista Scotti, Antonio Vighi, B. Medici and Fyodor Bryullov; the moulding masters N. Sayegin and P. Sayegin, the carvers Vasily Zakharov and V. Bobkov, the famous masters Tarasovs (carvers, parquet layers, woodworkers) and many other workmen.

In his sketches, Rossi thought over and worked out literally every detail: from the cast-iron fence decorated with his favourite military symbols to the layout of the park, from the solution to the urban planning problem to the details of the patterns of the mosaic parquet of the Palace's rooms.

The appearance of the Palace's main building and western wing has been preserved till our days almost unchanged. Currently, the interiors of only two rooms, the main foyer and the White Room, give a complete idea of the architect's talent, of his original design, of the former magnificence of the grand ducal palace. Both the rooms are true masterpieces of the art of classical interior.

The main foyer is superb, with its broad state staircase that forks into two flights leading to a gallery in the first floor. The gallery is decorated with 18 grand Corinthian columns.

Situated in the centre of first-floor enfilade, the White Room features a unique Saint Petersburg palace interior of the first quarter of the 19th century and demonstrates the perfection and an amazing proportion of all its elements. Despite the losses suffered during works for adaptation of the building to the needs of a museum, the room preserved its painted and sculptured decorations, original furniture (made in accordance with sketches by Rossi) as well as works of decorative and applied art. It is interesting to know that the artistic perfection of the White Room was in such high regard among its contemporaries that it was decided to give a model of the room as a present to George IV, a king of Great Britain.

The emperor's instructions read as follows: "The architect Rossi will receive 5,000 roubles to be used as advance money for artists and masters that will work on the model of the grand white living room to be dispatched to the king of Great Britain." The model of the White Room (made in accordance with a sketch by Rossi) was delivered to its destination. The model made an impression, judging by the fact that the carver I. Tarasov who had delivered it was rewarded with a royal medal.

After Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich died in 1849, the magic luxury of high-society balls yielded to a more refined atmosphere of the art salon of Grand Dutchess Yelena Pavlovna. It attracted celebrities from the capital and other cities, public figures, politicians, musicians, composers, scientists and writers. Here, the Russian Music Society and later the first Russia's conservatory were born.

In the late 18th century, the Palace was inherited by Grand Dutchess Yekaterina Mikhailovna who also held a title of Grand Dutchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. She bequeathed the Palace to her three children, Prince Georg of Mecklenburg, Prince Michael of Mecklenburg and Princess Helene of Saxe-Altenburg.

Since the Palace was supposed to belong to the House of Romanov, while the inheritors were German subjects, Emperor Alexander III considered it necessary to remedy the situation by buying the Palace out on behalf of the state. The project of Alexander III was implemented by his son, young Emperor Nicholas II.

After Alexander III had died, an imperial decree was issued on 20th January 1895. The decree confirmed the purchase of the Palace, together with its wings, its service buildings and its garden for 4 million silver roubles. The fate of the building was decided on 13th April 1895 when another imperial decree by Nicholas II established the Emperor Alexander III Russian Museum (the Museum, for short) and handed over all the complex of the Palace to the Museum.

This way two things finally merged into one: the idea of a state museum of Russian visual art, which had been long seeking implementation, and the fate of the Palace, which had been waiting for its true destination, free of the vanities of the world. The Palace started a new life as The Museum.

The charter of the Museum required that the manager be a member of the Imperial House and be appointed by an imperial decree. Nicholas II appointed Grand Duke Georgy Mikhaylovich the manager of the newly established museum.

By imperial decision, a special committee (the Commitee) was formed; the tasks of the Committee were to determine the amount of required repair works in the Palace, to supervise the works, to select contractors, to agree on prices and to ensure sparing use of allocated funds.

During the first three years after the Museum was established, most of the interiors were under remodelling, and rebuilding works were being performed, in order to reconcile the palace luxury and the functional tasks of museum exhibitions.

This mission, which necessarily caused controversial evaluation of whoever undertook it, by his or her contemporaries and descendants, fell to a lot of Vasily Svinyin (1865–1939), a young and energetic architect of the Academy of Arts, whom the Committee appointed the manager of the works. The architect also became a member of the committee, though he did not receive voting rights. This way, all the works planned to be performed in the building of the Palace to designs of Svinyin, ranging from insignificant repairs to major rebuilding, had to be first submitted to the committee for evaluation and approved by the manager of the Museum.

Despite such a complex bureaucratic procedure, it took only two years and a half to construct a room for the Art Department at the Museum. The rebuilding works were performed fast, in a solid way and sparingly. It is enough to note that only 540,000 roubles were spent for the enormous amount of major works (including the technical reconstruction of the building) as well as the restoration and finishing works.

Aleksandr Polovtsov, the author of one of the earliest guidebooks on the Museum, was openly delighted with Svinyin's assiduity and frugality that had allowed him to limit himself to such an amount and, at the same time, to preserve major original layouts, all the historic samples of the finish of the Palace's interiors and a necessary integrity of its architectural decorations.

Vasily Pushkaryov, the head of the Museum during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, described the work of Svinyin in a more restrained way: "Svinyin has often been reproached for the fact that he remodelled many rooms to adapt them to the needs of the Museum. However, he faced a very complex task. He had to transform the palace rooms ... that had been designed for a private life into public rooms that would be suitable for display of paintings and sculptures. ... We must recognise that the architect approached the task in a proper way..."

Be that as it may, even after the rebuilding works by Svinyin that however preserved some unique interiors and left the general architectural appearance of the building intact, the Palace has remained a truly precious "frame" for precious collections.

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State Russian Museum, Mikhailovsky Palace



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