the Bronze Hercules, one of the symbols of the Catherine Park, today returned to its historic place on the stairs of the Cameron gallery. Since September 2019 statue was under restoration, thus leaving Tsarskoye Selo for the first time in seventy years.
the Museum-reserve “Tsarskoye Selo” note that the restorers have carried out a number of challenges: fragmented recovered from the loss of bronze and scrapes the patina from thousands touch visitors. In addition, the master removed the small dents and cracks, cleaned and treated the sculpture from the inside, stepped up the design of the frame.
the figures of Heracles and Flora that adorn the staircase of the Cameron gallery, established in 1780-ies at the request of the Empress Catherine II. This bronze copies of antique marble statues. In particular, Hercules made in the likeness of the work of the Greek master Lysippus (IV century BC). Casting on models of sculptor Fyodor Gordeev performed caster Vasily Mazalov.
During the great Patriotic war, the statues of Hercules and Flora were taken to Germany. There they miraculously have melted down: in the autumn of 1947 Anatoly Kuchumov, the Director of the Central repository of Museum collections of suburban palaces-museums, found them on the smelter city of Galle. In the same year the bronze statues returned to Tsarskoye Selo for its historic sites.
Last winter, when Hercules took on the restoration, flora held the first one. Now the sculpture back together.
