Museum exhibits often attract attention not only for its artistic merit. The history of the birth, existence, and sometimes the death of some of the masterpieces could form the basis of an exciting film or book.
the Unusual fate of the four sculptures of the Moscow museums — in joint material mos.ru and the Agency “Moscow”.
One of the most interesting exhibits at the Memorial flat of A. S. Pushkin on Arbat — a small copy of the statue of Catherine II, reminiscent of the nontrivial dowry of his wife. After the wedding, in possession of Pushkin was a family heirloom Goncharov — three-meter three-ton statue of the Empress, cast in bronze. “Copper grandmother” — as he called it.
From the family of Natalia Nikolaevna took this monument? All the matter in the personal initiative of her great-grandfather Athanasius Abramovich.
the Genus Goncharov belonged to one of Russia’s first sailing industries. Founded during the reign of Peter I, it gave name to the family estate in Kaluga province — Polotnyanyy Zavod. In 1775 a thriving enterprise was visited by Catherine the Great, and took her Afanasiy Goncharov procured a resolution to commemorate this event the monument to the Empress.
the Order was placed in Berlin, which is famous for bronze casting. His execution was the last work of a lecturer of the Berlin Academy of fine arts Wilhelm Christian Meyer, finish that had his son-in-law. Statue with a height of over three meters and weighing more than three tons were ready to 1788, but due to the outbreak of the Russo-Swedish war of three years stuck in the port of Stettin — ironically, the hometown of the Empress. Until the moment the statue was taken to Russia, did not live nor Athanasius Abramovich nor his son, and all things came to the grandfather of the future wife of Pushkin Athanasius Nikolayevich Goncharova.
When the life of Catherine II statue set no time, and after the accession of Paul I, it was already unsafe. The new Emperor hated his mother, who was on the throne through a Palace coup, which cost the life of his father. Besides doing Goncharov upset, and the idea of the ancestors had no funds.
So bronze Empress in 1832-m, a year after the wedding, went to the Pushkin family, it was expected that the poet will be able to gain from its sale those 11 thousand rubles, which he gave the dowry of the wife for appearance’s sake.
First, the couple tried to sell the monument to the Treasury. For the evaluation Commission was established, which included the famous Ivan Martos, author of the monument to Minin and Pozharsky on red square. The verdict of the Commission was sympathetic, but the purchase never took place.
Then the poet took a friend 12 900 roubles on the security of the sculpture. The debt was never repaid, and the statue was later sold to the owner of the foundry��about the plant in Saint-Petersburg to Franz bird for three thousand rubles — for scrap. However, Byrd, who appreciated the artistic merits of the sculpture, not raised a hand to put it in the smelter.
“Copper grandmother” gathering dust on the plant for over 10 years until it caught the eye of Ekaterinoslav merchants, who came up with the idea to erect a monument in the city, named in honor of the Empress. The monument was sold to them for seven thousand rubles, and in 1846 mounted on the Cathedral square of Yekaterinoslav (now — the city of the Dnieper).
the adventure of the statue did not end there. In the summer of 1914 it was moved to another location and replaced the pedestal. In 1917 it was decided to melt down the projectiles, but the Director of the local historical Museum saved the monument, covered with ground in the pit. When the dust settled, the long-suffering Catherine was put in the Museum courtyard.
traces of the statues are lost in 1941, when Dnipropetrovsk (former Ekaterinoslav had this name from 1926 to 2016) was occupied by the Germans. It is believed that she perished in the same place where once was born in Germany, where she was sent to be melted for military purposes.
In 2012, the lost statue was reconstructed in miniature by the sculptor Irina Makarova, who used the photos once made by the guests of the Dnepropetrovsk Museum. It was recreated in three copies, one of them is kept in Arbat apartment of the poet.
20 Nov 1805 Austerlitz Napoleon I scored one of the greatest of his victories, defeating numerically superior to his army of Russian and Austrian troops under the leadership of Alexander I. and Francis II. The outcome of the battle of the three emperors was the collapse of the third anti-French coalition.
the next day after Austerlitz, chief Advisor to the Bonaparte on the arts first Director of the Louvre, Dominique-vivant Denon has proposed to perpetuate resounding victory. It was decided to build in Paris a column similar to Trajan’s column in Rome, depicting the victory of the Romans in the wars with the tribe of the Dacians. Place of installation of the column Napoleon chose the place vendôme.
the Monument with a height of 44 meters cost the Treasury two million francs, the work dragged on for four years. The best masters of Europe were created encircling the column in a spiral of 280 metres of bas-reliefs on the subjects of a victorious campaign, and the material for them has gone the bronze captured at Austerlitz, Russian and Austrian cannons. The monument was considered as the Austerlitz column, then Victory column and the column of the great army. Today it is known as the vendôme column.
the Building was crowned with a bronze sculpture of Napoleon in a toga, executed by a scholar of ancient samples by Antoine-Denis the Chaudes. To admire his work, the Parisians did not last long: in 1814, it overthrew the allied forces. Since then, the monument to Napoleon repeatedly overthrown and restored. Today VA��the dome is crowned by a third bronze Napoleon, created by Auguste Dumont in 1863.
the Shoda and to work on the vendôme column was applied to the image of Napoleon as a Roman Senator-legislator in a toga and sandals, with a scroll in hand and a Laurel wreath on his head. This marble statue is preserved, for example, in the Palace of the French kings in Compiegne, who at one time was the residence of Bonaparte.
In Napoleonic France, where the Vogue turned to the ancient art of the Empire style, found in Chaudes “Roman” image of the Emperor was demanded. Among those who replicated was an older sister, Eliza Bonaparte, a powerful brother wrote extensive holdings in the Apennines, including the Carrara quarry with the best on the continent marble.
Active sister of the Emperor was founded in Carrara Academy of fine arts, the teacher of which at one time was the sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini, who worked on the bas-reliefs of the Vendome column, and after the collapse of Napoleon followed him into exile on the island of Elba.
In 1808, Eliza ordered the Bartolini multiple copies of the sculpture Chaudes, which are then sent to different parts of conquered Europe. One of them was in the Legislature of Hamburg. Two-meter “Rome” Napoleon soon became the trophy of the Russian troops who liberated Germany in foreign campaigns 1813-1814 years. Marble the prisoner was sent to Moscow, in the new Imperial Museum, which was created by Alexander I on the basis of the treasures of the Armory. In the Kremlin, the statue was kept almost 170 years, until 1983, until I got a new Museum registration. Napoleon now exhibited in the Museum-panorama “Borodino battle”.
the Museum-estate “Ostankino” has one of the best in the capital collections of sculpture. The core of the collection items purchased by count Nikolay Sheremetev, in the late eighteenth century specifically for the interior of the Ostankino Palace. The story of one of them, statues, artificial marble, which has the nickname “the Vestal” — perhaps the most interesting.
during the first half of the nineteenth century it occupied a Central place in Accompnay the gallery of the Palace theatre. It is first mentioned in the Palace inventory, 1802, and in 1809 a similar document-the there this explanation: “in the Middle of the room clay statue antique, religion in the form of a woman instead of a cross, holding in right hand a crystal lamp round…”. It is believed that this is draped in a toga female figure depicts a priestess of the goddess Vesta, protector of the family hearth in Ancient Rome.
the Statue is a rare example of a case when a work of art interesting because of the personality not only of the artist, but also a production organizer. “Vestal” was made in England in the late XVIII century in the workshop of artificial��th stone Coud Eleanor (Eleanor Coade).
Special technology littimer (“twice baked stone” in Greek) has allowed the Studio Eleanor Coud take a leading role in the market of neoclassical sculpture, architectural and garden decor. The resulting ceramic material was of such high quality that his contemporaries dubbed him, in honor of a businesswoman kodshim stone.
mistress of the enterprises attracted to the work of the best British sculptors and designers, and also used to advertise non-trivial for his time ideas — such as ads in Newspapers and the production of multi-page catalogs. Due to this aggressive promotion among customers Coud was not only the color of the British aristocracy, headed by George III, but also Russian count Sheremetiev.
a Woman standing at the head of the enterprise with a very high reputation for prudish England of the era of George III that was incredibly brave. Eleanor Coud refer to the number of the first English feminists. In the will she wrote a substantial part of his fortune to charity, as well as dozens of six specific women who experienced need. Most of them were widows and spinsters, and in that case, when the heiress was married, in his will stipulated that neither the husband nor other male relatives could not claim her share.
Now, when the Museum-estate “Ostankino” closed for restoration, the masterpieces of the sculpture collection of the Sheremetyev Palace, including the “Vestal” can be seen on the long exhibition at the Opera house of the Museum-reserve “Tsaritsyno”.
on 4 October 1957 with the launching in the USSR of the first artificial Earth satellite began the space age of mankind. This epoch-making event has opened for artists the theme of space exploration. One of the world’s first “space” monuments appeared in Moscow just a few months after the successful launch. In 1958 in the Park CDSA Frunze (now Catherine Park) have established the allegorical composition “To the stars!” the work of Grigory Postnikova. On a granite pedestal the sculptor has depicted the soaring athletically folded bronze male figure, from whose hand goes in the space rocket.
In the same year, the image of the sculpture was found on a stamp of the Czechoslovak Republic, and in 1961, after the first human flight into space, the creation of the Postnikov immortalized on a stamp and Mail the USSR. The very same sculptural composition was later repeated twice in Pyatigorsk and Budyonnovsk.
Former orphan Grigory Postnikov from a young age dreamed of the sky. Before the war, managed to graduate from the Leningrad Institute of engineers of civil air fleet, in the war years worked in the rear repairman aircraft. With the return to civilian life, he was able to do what his heart desired, ��� the plastic arts.
in 1950, an engineer turned-sculptors, became a laureate of the Stalin prize among a group of sculptors headed by Yevgeny Vuchetich for relief “I Swear to you, comrade Lenin…”. Now this multi-figure work is kept in the Tretyakov gallery. However, official propaganda did not attract Postnikova — main in his life soon became the subject of space, which he dedicated to dozens of works.
Repetition is one of the earliest works — a small copy of the composition “To the stars!” became the house designer Sergei Korolev. Now it is the Memorial house-Museum of academician S. P. Korolev, a branch of the Museum of cosmonautics in Moscow.
this building in Ostankino, the founder of the Soviet space program had moved with his wife in November 1959 and held it for the last six years of his life. There was a tradition: after returning to Land Soviet cosmonauts at the Queen gathered everyone who visited the space. In the winter of 1964 at one of these meetings the first 11 Soviet cosmonauts came with a gift — a work of Postnikov.
This sculpture was very fond of the Queen. He put her in the hall, and a bronze statue of the rocket was the first that saw guests. In the summer of 1965 at the request of the Queen on the pedestal was engraved with the autographs of all the donors, whom he brought into orbit — Yuri Gagarin, German Titov, Andrian Nikolayev, Pavel Popovich, Valery Bykovsky, Valentina Tereshkova, Vladimir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov, Boris Yegorov, Pavel Belyaev and Alexei Leonov.
From July 17 miniature sculpture “To the stars!” can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of cosmonautics at the exhibition “In the name of peace and progress”, which talks about international cooperation in space and is timed to the 45th anniversary of the Soviet-American experimental flight Soyuz — Apollo.
