Russian art of the Peter I era. Russian art of the Peter I era When the summer palace was built

Before the founding of St. Petersburg in 1703, the banks of the Neva were by no means deserted.

Upstream, life was seething in the city of Nyen, and at the point where the Fontanka River branched from the Neva there was a rich estate of a Swedish major who served in the Nyenschanz fortress.

The estate was called Konau Manor, and the Russians called it “Kononova Estate”.

On this site, after the founding of the city, Peter’s summer residence was built.

• One should not assume that the banks of the Neva were inhabited by Swedes, who were expelled by Tsar Peter as a result of the war. Almost next to the Kononova estate stood the completely Russian village “Usadishchi”.

In contrast to the surrounding swampy area, the territory of the estate was landscaped not only from the point of view of noble amenities, but also quite utilitarianly: the field was plowed, fertilized and had a good vegetable garden.

On the basis of this vegetable garden (when there was no longer a need for it), in 1706 the Summer Garden, which became famous throughout the country, began to be planted around the palace.

At first, the building of the royal house was wooden; a canal was dug from the Fontanka River to it, thus, for safety, the estate was surrounded on three sides by water.

Since the main events of the beginning of the construction of St. Petersburg unfolded on the other side of the Neva, a small mooring bay was organized in front of the Summer Palace, which was called Gavanets.

In 1710, according to the design of the architect Domenico Trezzini, a stone Summer Palace.

Architect Schlüter decorated the façade of the new building with bas-reliefs depicting the events of the Northern War.

Peter commissioned the same architect to furnish the interiors of the palace, but Schlüter died after devoting only a year of his life to the palace.

Peter's wife and children lived on the second floor, and the king's chambers were located on the first. There was also a reception room where he received petitions, and a punishment cell where the tsar personally imprisoned the guilty, and from where he himself released them.

It was in the lobby of the Summer Palace that the first attempt on Peter's life was made by schismatics.

And Peter’s favorite room in the palace was the turning workshop.

The palace was called “Summer” because the royal family moved here in May and lived until October.

The walls were quite thin and there was no heating. But the first sewage system in St. Petersburg was installed in the Summer Palace.

It was flowing, this was facilitated by the strength of the flow of the Fontanka River. And water was supplied to the house by pumps.

In 1777, a flood destroyed the canals around the palace, and the sewerage system ceased to function.

After the death of the king and his wife, no one lived in the palace; it was used for meetings of the Privy Council and for recreation of the court emperors. And after the construction of a new large Summer Palace for Empress Elizabeth Petrovna on the banks of the Moika River (where the Mikhailovsky Castle now stands), this one stood completely abandoned.

This saved the house from alterations and reconstruction and preserved original appearance to the present day.

After the revolution, it was transferred to the Russian Museum, in 1934 it was given the status of an independent Historical and Household Museum, but then returned back.

Today the Summer Palace of Peter the Great is a branch of the Russian Museum.

In the 60s of the 20th century, a complete restoration of the palace was carried out, thanks to which many of the original elements were restored.

Until now, the Summer Palace has retained a cozy homely atmosphere; in the museum’s exhibition you can see the personal belongings of the Tsar, his wife Catherine, their courtiers and the Empress’s ladies-in-waiting.

Price entrance ticket:

• adults - 80 rubles
• children and students - 30 rubles

Opening hours:

• The palace is open from June to October from 10.00 to 18.00
• Closed: Tuesday and last Monday of the month
• Important! Museum opening hours depend on weather conditions

Official site

• St. Petersburg, Summer Garden, Kutuzov embankment, building 2

How to get there:

The nearest metro station is Gostiny Dvor.

Coming out of the metro through the underground passage we find ourselves on the other side of Nevsky Prospekt. This is the intersection with Sadovaya Street.

You need to walk along Sadovaya without turning anywhere.

We pass the Mikhailovsky Palace, cross the Moika River, and walk along the Swan Canal (on the other side of which is the Summer Garden). The road ends at Palace Embankment.

Here you need to turn left, cross the Verkhnee-Lebyazhy Bridge and, having reached the middle of the grid Summer Garden go inside. At the first alley, turn left.

The alley leads to the Fontanka embankment, where the Palace of Peter 1 is located.

The Summer Palace of Peter I in St. Petersburg was built in 1711–1712. designed by the architect Domenico Trezzini. Architects and sculptors from Western Europe: Andreas Schlüter, Georg-Johann Mattarnovi, Jean-Baptiste-Alexandre Leblond.

The Summer Palace of Peter I has a happy fate: after the death of Peter the palace never rebuilt, although there were some losses in interior decoration. The layout and appearance of the building, picturesque lampshades with allegorical content, pine wardrobes, tiled stoves and wall decoration with painted Dutch tiles, wooden paneling of the ground floor premises, interior decoration of the Lower and Upper Cookrooms and the Green Office have been preserved unchanged to this day. The unique wind instrument in the Cabinet of Peter I still shows the direction and strength of the wind, as well as time. On the second floor there is a Danzig wardrobe, in which, according to legend, Peter I kept his linen and boots.

The Summer Palace is valuable not only as one of the early architectural monuments of St. Petersburg, but also as evidence of the tastes, interests, and aspirations of Peter I, which were reflected in the architectural features of the monument.

To set up his residence, Peter I chose a habitable and advantageously located manor on a cape between the Neva and the Nameless Erik (now the Fontanka River), where the estate of the Swedish major Erich Berndt von Konow (Konau) was located - a small house with a farm yard and garden. At first, Peter could use the Konau house for living, but perhaps even then he built his own house for him. Ivan Matveev (Ugryumov), who from 1705 to 1707 supervised all engineering and construction work on the former Swedish manor. It was this building that I saw in 1710–1711. author of “Description of St. Petersburg and Kronshlot”: “Right by the river,” he writes, “the royal residence, that is, a small house in the garden of the Dutch facade, colorfully painted with gilded window frames and lead ornaments.”

On Peter’s instructions, a stone building was built on the site of his former house according to the design of the architect D. Trezzini. On April 17, 1712, Peter had already moved to live in the Summer Palace, and a year later the royal residence was visited by “overseas” guests: “On the third day [July] 6 Dutch and English trading ships came here, of which galliot and gukar (types of Dutch ships XVIII c.) they moored to me, that is, to my very chambers...”

After the death of Peter I, the Summer Palace lost its significance as a royal residence. Court servants lived here for some time . During the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, Peter’s daughter, who honored the memory of her father, the “dilapidations” were repaired, and the former royal residence in the first half of the 19th century began to be used as a place for the summer residence of prominent dignitaries of that time.

For the 200th anniversary of St. Petersburg, an exhibition of monuments from the Peter the Great era was held in the Summer Palace. Portraits and engravings, banners, military weapons, pieces of furniture and applied art, books, and drawings were delivered from the imperial palaces, the Hermitage, and the State Archive. The bed of Peter I from the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, presented at the exhibition, is still on display at the palace.

After 1917, the palace was preserved as a historical and architectural monument, but did not yet have the status of a museum. In 1925, the palace was transferred to the jurisdiction of the historical and everyday life department of the State Russian Museum, where exhibitions were held that were not related to the historical past of the palace.

Since 1934, the Summer Palace of Peter I has become an independent museum of memorial, historical and artistic nature. At the museum's exhibition you can see the clothes of Peter I, furniture, paintings and engravings, and objects of applied art from Peter's time.

During the Great Patriotic War, the Summer Palace was damaged by a blast wave, but the damage was repaired already in 1946, and the following year the palace-museum was opened to visitors. In the 1960s The palace underwent a comprehensive restoration under the leadership of the architect A. E. Gessen.

Since 2004, the Summer Palace has become part of the State Russian Museum. In 2015–2017 A comprehensive restoration was carried out in the palace, which was preceded by the painstaking work of historians and art critics. During the restoration process, the atmosphere of a royal home from the early 18th century was restored in the palace.

Of particular note is the restoration of the picturesque lampshades in seven rooms of the Summer Palace, after which the darkened unique painting was brought closer to its original color. There was a feeling of air and floating of allegorical figures.

In the Green Cabinet, where Peter’s rarities were located in special display cabinets, which marked the beginning of the history of the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg, the unique wall painting on wood of the early 18th century was cleaned and strengthened. The oak doors and shutters in the palace have been restored, and the parquet floors and fabrics on the walls have been updated in accordance with historical materials. Window sashes from the 19th century. have been replaced.

Particular attention was paid to the famous wind instrument (anemometer), which was ordered by Peter I in Dresden and installed in the Summer Palace in 1714. The device combines three dials: one of them is an hour dial, the other two are indicators of wind direction and speed. The arrows of the right and left dials are connected to the weather vane located on the roof through a shaft cut into the wall. The device is an integral part of the Summer Palace, its most unique rarity. The wind device has a carved frame on which mythological characters are represented: the lord of the winds Aeolus, the lord of the seas Neptune and sea emblems - rudders of ships, oars, tridents and a crown of rostra - prows of ships - crowning the frame.

Specialists carefully approached the restoration of the Lower and Upper Povaren, decorated with painted Dutch tiles. In Nizhnyaya Povarna there is a sink made of black marble, which is part of the water supply system of Peter the Great's time. Under the palace building, a brick vaulted tunnel has been preserved, which provided the operation of a flow-through sewer system - the first in St. Petersburg.

An updated gilded weather vane shone on the roof of the palace.

St. Petersburg looks like a carved box made of turquoise and gems. Its carved and painted walls are bas-reliefs with a hundred or two old fairy tales and half-forgotten stories. The cover is made up of church domes and tall spiers topped with weather vanes and crosses. The bottom is the foundations of old buildings that still remember the breath of their creators, high arches and powerful beams that continue to solemnly support the weight of several centuries. And once you open the box, there will be an eclecticism of styles and amazing combinations inside - grace, strength and power, which bloom with new colors with the onset of each century.

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The Summer Palace of Peter the Great can hardly be called the most beautiful palace complex Northern capital- this building looks somewhat modest or even pale compared to other giants - real poetry in stone, however, this particular palace is part of the Russian Museum, representing a residence where most The great monarch spent his time not occupied with travel or military campaigns. This means that this is where you should look if you want to understand exactly what and how this person lived.

The Summer Palace was originally built precisely as an imperial residence, appearing on the map of St. Petersburg almost with the very foundation of the city. The main concerns regarding its appearance and design fell on the shoulders of the eminent master of his craft, Domenico Trezzini, according to whose design a small two-story mansion in the Baroque rhythm was subsequently erected. It is worth noting that, despite the fact that Trezzini is still formally the architect, the first plan for the future mansion was developed personally by the monarch, and only then these drawings were adjusted and somewhat reworked in a creative manner. The location of the residence was also chosen personally by Peter the Great - between the Fontanka and the Neva.

Some find the design of the Summer Palace somewhat meager - its walls are decorated with only twenty-eight bas-reliefs, which, as one would expect, turned out to be another variation on the theme of perpetuating the victory over the Swedes in the brilliant Northern War for Russia, and the layout of the rooms is the same for both floors, but this simplicity the building is more than compensated by the complexity of the laconic structure of the Summer Garden, which was conceived as an imitation of Versailles. It is noteworthy that the imitation was more than complete - and today the Summer Garden continues to be considered one of the most sophisticated examples of landscape art.

Exposition

The monarch's summer residence is quite interesting place for a visit not only from the standpoint of delving into the life of the emperor himself, but also from the point of view of observing the innovations that this energetic man decided to adopt from his more technically confident neighbors. Thus, a weather vane, unusual in its shape, which represents the figure of St. George the Victorious, with the usual gesture of slaying the serpent, is the work of a mechanic whom Peter the Great met in Dresden.

The unusualness of this mechanism was that its main component is located just under the roof of the mansion and is a complex panel for that time, from which it was possible to track not only the direction, but also the strength of the wind. Another unique detail of the Summer Palace is the presence of a sewer system, which was the first example of structures of this type in the entire city.

Today, a visit to the Summer Palace includes not only the opportunity to personally look at the monarch's office, his dressing room, personal rooms and workshops, but also to visit another rather remarkable building, which is called the People's Quarters. What is the value of these premises? It was here that the Amber Room, which was so barbarously stolen, was once located, as well as a number of collections that were replenished on the personal initiatives of Peter the Great. So, it was here that the very collection of Ruysch, a Dutch anatomist, who aroused genuine interest and admiration for the results of his work in the Russian monarch, was kept. Today, this collection can be seen during a visit to the Kuntskamera, as it became one of the first components of the future Museum of Oddities.

The most interesting sights of St. Petersburg in our article.

Opening hours and ticket prices

A visit to the palace complex usually begins at ten o'clock in the morning and ends at 18:00. The ticket office closes an hour earlier. The choice of a day off is quite atypical - it is Tuesday. There are differences in ticket prices for citizens of Russia proper and some CIS countries, and for foreign citizens. The former, in general, will spend no more than one hundred rubles on tickets, of course, if they are not included in preferential categories, while the latter will have to pay up to three hundred rubles for an entrance ticket.

The Summer Palace of Peter I in St. Petersburg is located in the Summer Garden, which was founded in the early years of the city's founding. The Summer Garden and the Summer Palace of Peter I are currently under the jurisdiction of the State Russian Museum.

With the start of construction on the left bank of the Neva Admiralty, the construction of residential buildings also began. Peter I chose the section of the Neva bank between the Nameless Erik (Fontanka) and the Mya (Moika) River for his summer residence.
At first Peter I lived in wooden house, built in 1903 and completely unlike the royal residence. It was this building that was seen in 1710-1711 by the author of “Description of St. Petersburg and Kronshlot”: “Right near the river,” he writes, “the royal residence, that is, a small house in the garden of the Dutch facade, colorfully painted with gilded window frames and lead ornaments ".
Peter called this house his “summer palace,” and then this name was inherited by a new building, built in stone, in which the royal family actually lived in the summer.

After the Moika was connected to the Neva by the Lebyazhy Canal, a small island was formed. In its northern part, in 1710-1714, the Summer Palace was built, which was one of the first stone palaces in St. Petersburg. The author of the project is architect D. Trezzini. The interiors were created under the direction of the German sculptor and architect Andreas Schlüter. Russian artists A. Zakharov, I. Zavarzin and F. Matveev participated in the decoration of the rooms.

According to legend, the tsar ordered the construction of the house so that the building would symbolize the new policy of Russia. Then D. Trezzini positioned the residence building so that six of its twelve windows looked east, and the other six looked strictly west. “So our Russia is equally facing both the West and the East,” explained the architect, and the tsar approved this expression of his ideas.

The two-story brick building of the Summer Palace in the Baroque style with a hipped iron roof is crowned with a copper weather vane in the form of St. George slaying a serpent with a spear. At the corners of the roof there are gutters in the form of winged dragons, made of slotted iron.
The entrance of the palace is framed by a portal made of black marble, above which is a bas-relief depicting Minerva with war trophies. The main decoration of the facades of the palace of Peter I are 28 bas-reliefs, made using a rare technique of hand-painting, located in frames between the windows of the first and second floors. The theme of the images is the glorification of Russian sea power. Perhaps the sketches of these compositions were proposed by the German sculptor and architect A. Schlüter, who used engravings of European masters depicting sea creatures.

The theme of triumph in the decoration of the palace's facade allows us to consider it the first monument to Russia's victories in the Northern War. The scenes presented on the bas-reliefs are mythological, but the meaning contained in them is divorced from the context of the myths and becomes understandable only in connection with the main events in the life of Russia and Peter I himself - the struggle with Sweden for access to the sea. The subjects of the bas-reliefs were undoubtedly chosen by the sovereign, and it is no coincidence that some of them coincide with the subjects of ship carvings ("The Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite", "Perseus defeating Medusa", "Cupids on Dolphins", "Cupids on Hippocampi"). The interpretation of these allegories can be found in printed descriptions of the triumphal gates erected on the occasion of victories over the Swedes, where Neptune and Amphitrite are the personification of the maritime glory of Russia and a symbol of its growth, Peter himself is represented in the images of ancient deities and heroes (Mars, Hercules, Perseus), and the king's opponent, the Svei state, is called "hydra, chimera, cunning serpent."

The palace is small (which is commensurate with the tastes of Peter I): 26.5 x 15.5 m; height of two floors - 8.1 m; height to the roof ridge - 13.3 m; the height of the rooms is 3.3 m. The layout of both floors is the same. The tsar's chambers were on the first floor, and his wife Catherine and children were on the second floor.

The palace was intended only for living in the warm season (from May to October), which is why it has thin walls and single frames. The palace has only 14 rooms, two kitchens, two internal corridors. The arrangement of the rooms is enfilade, and the service rooms communicate with the internal corridor, which eliminated the need for servants to appear in the front rooms. The service corridor opens onto: a) Dressing room (original pine wardrobes for storing clothes have been preserved - they are attached to the walls with special forged hooks); b) Denshchitskaya (1st floor); Freylinskaya (2nd floor); c) cookhouses, toilets, furnace openings; d) a service spiral staircase hidden behind an oak carved structure resembling a wardrobe (made in accordance with Peter's instructions dated May 2, 1714). The outer door from the corridor opened onto the front Neva gallery.

The location of the palace on the peninsula was used to install a flow-through sewer system. The idea of ​​the architect J.B. Leblond, at that time - the last word technology, Peter was very fascinated. A sewer tunnel was laid under the foundation of the building, connecting the Neva with the Havanese, through which water circulated. Six palace toilets were connected to the tunnel using wooden boxes (the flow-through sewerage system operated only until 1777, since the Havanese was filled up after the flood).

According to the project of Zh.B. Leblon equipped the lower kitchen of the Summer Palace - a hearth, cutting tables, pantries and a sink with running water appeared here. “What is of great convenience and what one can only dream of,” wrote Leblond, “is to have running water by running pipes with water from a nearby source.” Water was supplied to the palace from the fountain system of the Summer Garden, pumped into a lead tank in the attic, from where it flowed through pipes to the cookhouse.

A unique description of the interiors of the Summer Palace, left by an unknown author in 1720, has been preserved: “... a palace, very beautifully decorated with various Chinese upholstery. In three rooms there were velvet beds with wide braiding that matched the entire decoration. There were many mirrors, many decorations, marble floor "Adjacent to the rooms is a kitchen, the walls of which are covered with upholstery, like rooms in other palaces. It contained pumps, utility rooms, cabinets for silver and pewter utensils. One of the rooms opposite was filled with turning and metalwork tools..."

In Peter's Palace, doors, wall panels, and stairs are made of oak. The exceptions are two offices - Green (on the 2nd floor) and Personal Area Peter's (on the 1st floor), where the doors and wall panels are trimmed with walnut (this refers to the room previously called by researchers the Turning Room - the lathes of Peter I, which are now kept in the State Hermitage, were demonstrated here). The rooms adjacent to the Study are the dining room and the king's bedroom. On the panel of the door leading to the bedroom is an image of Golgotha ​​(presumably the work of Peter I). The emperor's office and kitchen are decorated with unique Dutch tiles, and the fireplaces are decorated with stucco bas-reliefs. The lampshades of the office are beautifully painted (master G. Gzel).

There is a unique wind device in the Cabinet. The carved frame, whose carvings are made on the theme of maritime symbols, contains three disks with a scale: the upper one is a clock with hands (hour, minute and second), the lower disks are “wind decrees” connected to a weather vane on the roof of the palace. A device with “wind instructions” is a navigation device that allows you to determine the strength and direction of the wind in the Baltic region. It was ordered by Peter I to the Dresden masters Dinglinger and Gaertner in 1713. In 1714, the wind device was brought to St. Petersburg and installed in a place chosen by Peter himself - in his Office. A weather vane in the form of the figure of St. George the Victorious, installed on the roof, sets the mechanism of this device in motion.


The decoration of the Green Office on the top floor is well preserved. This is one of the first examples of interior decoration in the spirit of the new French fashion, brought to Russia by the architect J.B. Leblon, which involved decorating the walls with panels with decorative paintings, mirrors, and desudéportes. In this office, in the closets, the doors of which are still glazed with squares of “lunar” glass from the early 18th century, objects from Peter’s first Kunstkamera were placed.

After the death of Peter I and Catherine I, almost no one lived in their house. At one time, meetings of the Supreme Privy Council were held there, and later the imperial courtiers came here to relax.

The appearance of the palace has hardly changed over three centuries. This is explained by the fact that even during the life of the emperor, new summer chambers were built near the Swan Canal. After the construction of the large Summer Palace of Elizabeth Petrovna on the banks of the Moika (on the site of the current Mikhailovsky Castle), the old palace of Peter I was abandoned. This saved it from alterations and preserved its original appearance. The Green Office, the dining room and the premises in which Catherine I’s ladies-in-waiting lived were preserved in their original form. The personal belongings of Peter and Catherine remained, which later became the main exhibits of the museum.
The fact that the palace has survived to this day without significant changes is confirmed by both the historical plans of the Summer Garden of the first half of the 18th century and the recording drawings of M.G. Zemtsov 1727.

The Summer Palace is not only one of the first stone buildings in St. Petersburg, from which the city “began,” but also a unique example of the architectural creativity of its founder, which reflected the unique personality of Peter I.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Summer Palace served as a summer residence for senior government officials. The museum history of the building begins in 1903, when, for the 200th anniversary of St. Petersburg, an exhibition dedicated to Peter I was opened within its walls.

After 1917, the palace was preserved as a historical and architectural monument. In 1934, a historical and artistic memorial museum was opened in the Summer Palace of Peter I. Currently, the exhibition of the Summer Palace includes personal belongings of Peter the Great and Catherine I, as well as furniture, paintings, tapestries, glass and porcelain items from the Peter the Great era.

Materials used from the site www.rusmuseum.ru