Sunday 29th April
I
think we got up early, I think we had breakfast but I don’t know what it was.
We left at some time during the a.m. for Petrodvorets [now known – again - as Peterhof],
a palace built by Peter the Great. It was started in 1714 and finished about
ten years later. Which is a silly thing to say really because it’s the sort of
building that was always being extended or redecorated. And also, it was absolutely
rebuilt after the Second World War because it was devastated by the occupying
Nazis, who had a “vicious hatred for the Soviet people and for Russian culture”.
Fortunately, before the invasion, 7,363 objets d’art and 49 statues
(from the Great Cascade) were evacuated. Unfortunately, 34,214 museum pieces
and 11,700 books had to be left behind, and these were plundered or destroyed.
However, from the restoration work to be seen in the palace, you could never
tell that the place had been reduced to rubble, or rouble if you prefer. The
stuff is magnificent.
The way they restored things was to evacuate one example of each item
and then make exact copies after the war. For example, one chair from a set; a
piece of silken wall-cloth (right luvly designs).
When we got to Petrodvorets, we found it was a bit chilly, there was
only one fountain working in the Great Cascade, and the canal leading to the
Gulf of Finland wasn’t in a water-bearing state. There were also a lot of
people there (it must be worse in summer) which is why we were stuck in the
entrance hall for a while. [Very true about it being crowded in summer. When I was
staying in a house in London later, a housemate showed me the photos he took at
Petrodvorets in either May, June or July – huge
crowds there…]
This museum is one of those places where visitors are required to wear
felt slippers over their shoes. This is hardly surprising when you see the
wonderful designs and different woods of the parquet floors (restored, of
course).
Rooms, rooms. The Crown (Bed) Room, with its Chinese scenes on silk
covering the walls (so too the Divan Room); the Throne Room, mostly white,
large and empty, chandeliers and parquet floor; a couple of rooms with
ceiling-high stoves of Dutch tile (Delft?), blue on white, each tile different
in design; and the Portrait Room, with hundreds of portraits on the walls, each
representing a different national costume, or expression, but not always a different
face – they used models more than once. Three hundred and sixty-eight
portraits, all done by Pietro Rotari [1707-1762] and acquired by Catherine the
Great.
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| Portrait Room at Peterhof |
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| Sofa Room at Peterhof. |
The place is a marvel to see, but we couldn’t stay there forever; so ‘twas
back to the hotel, which is in Leningrad, twenty-nine kilometres away. On the
way back we passed many old mansions, lovely buildings, sitting in their acres
of land surrounded by trees looking out onto the Gulf. We more than likely
passed them on the way in, but I was dozing then so I didn’t see them.
Lunch at the hotel was borsch and saucy meat. Then it was a tour of the
Winter Palace, the Hermitage, that massive beautiful blue and white-columned
building on the banks of the Neva, near the Admiralty. It comprises five
buildings and houses 2.7 million bits and pieces in grand halls and rooms.
Wonderful architecture – it’s a pity they don’t build the same sort of thing
nowadays. There are twelve thousand paintings, fifteen thousand sculptures and
over a million coins and medallions. Thirty thousand people visit it each day.
I don’t know if they’re the same ones every day, though, but they probably
think it’s worth it.
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| Inside The Hermitage |
On
the way to the displays of early Italian, Spanish and Dutch paintings, we went
through a hall of magnificence: chandeliers and marble, a floor mosaic, and
some tables with mosaic tops. These Russian mosaics have tiny little tiles that
look like dots of paints when you look at them closely. The artists had
something like 3000 hues at their disposal, and they used them well.
There certainly are some great paintings, and such a crowd, mostly tour
groups [like
us]. And photography is allowed inside, but no flash. I was taking a
picture of a Rembrandt but just as I did Luba put her hand in front of the
camera. Not to stop me taking a picture, but as explanation to what she was
saying at the time.
A
couple of Leonard’s were there too.
The last exhibit we went to see was the French Impressionists (by
popular demand). Some very nice Monets, a Pissaro or two, van Gogh, Renoir and
two rooms full of Matisse; and others, of course, including quite a few of
Picasso. [It transpired that, after the break-up of the Soviet
Union, the Hermitage had paintings stored away that had been thought to have
been lost or destroyed during the war – this included some van Goghs, which in
the Taschen catalogue (complete works), were printed as pre-war black and white
photographs.]
Well, we couldn’t spend all year at the place, so we went back to the
hotel. Hermitage means “place of solitude”. There is no such thing as that
there now.
Back
at the hotel. I went over to the big Berioska Shop across the road and bought a
large book on Palekh, lacquered black boxes of papier-maché from the town of
the same name. I bought a book instead of buying a piece of the real stuff,
which is expense-ridden – about $50 for a reasonable piece, but they can be
higher than $200. The book cost $17.90 (US).
We
had dinner of crumbed fish, got ready to go and went. We went back to the
station, waited on the bus, then got on the train. It left with us all on
board, so I went to bed.
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| An example of Palekh. I received a postcard of this earlier this year - printed in about 1976, from original piece painted in 1940, it shows Duke Stepanovich. |
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