Museum Madness Part 2

The Russian Museum – aka the Mikhailovsky Palace:
Built between 1812 and 1825 for Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov, this is the consolation prize I was talking about before . . . it was built for him since he, unlike his brothers Alexander I and Nicholas I, never became tsar. Eventually, under Nicholas II this palace was opened to the public in 1898 as a gallery housing Russian artwork. Today, unlike the Hermitage, its collections are made up of only Russian pieces. The palace itself, which is located in the heart of St. Petersburg (only a block away from Gostiny Dvor, and Dom Knigi and Nevsky Prospect) and shares a central park with the Mikhailovsky Theatre where we saw The Nutcracker on Valentine’s Day last week, is a massive (yet again these Russian royals with super extravagant homes), grand looking building, (about the colour of Mom’s, and Uncle David and Aunt Shirley’s Kitchens), with tall white columns and a pair of lion statues flanking the main entrance’s stairs. Inside, spread throughout the rooms on both floors of the original building, and throughout the additional wing which was constructed in the early 1900’s are the museum’s collections. Firstly, we wandered through their rooms of religious icons! Russian churches and cathedrals are quite extravagantly decked out in artwork of the various orthodox saints, as well as numerous biblical figures, and these rooms contained some examples of these. We saw images of: the Crucifixion, the Nativity, and many different portrayals of Christ throughout his life; numerous depictions of Peter and Paul, at least half a dozen of the angel Gabriel, numerous of the Virgin Mary, and others. After these rooms, we entered the early 18th Century rooms which mostly housed portraits, and sculptures of various famous (and some not so famous, “unknown man”) Russian figures, as well as some depictions of mythological characters. Next were the pieces from the first half of the 19th Century and I think both Ross and I enjoyed this part of the collection the most. Again many portraits, often of people we didn’t know, so we didn’t have too much interest in these, but there were dozens and dozens of beautiful landscapes and other fantastic paintings. One of these being, “The Last Day of Pompeii” by Karl Brullov (1833), considered to be the “most important work – in the whole history of Russian painting.” It is a massive canvas depicting a scene of the citizens of Pompeii in the last few chaotic hours of the city following the eruption of the volcano (impossible for me to describe in detail since I am not up with proper terminology on art but we bought a very nice guidebook which has a great picture of it, so ask to see it when I get home). Some of my favorite pieces were those of Ilya Repin, an artist from the later 19th Century including “Ceremonial Sitting of the State Council on 7 May 1901 Marking the Centenary of its Foundation” (in a nutshell a very important meeting, and seated at the head of the table is Nicholas II); a beautiful painting of a couple waste deep in the rising surf of the ocean, she is struggling to keep her hat on her head, but he has his arms flailed out and looks to be enjoying himself immensely (again sorry for my simple explanations) called “What an Expanse!,” and lastly, perhaps my favorite, a painting of the 1905 Revolution showing a crowd of protestors waving banners and chanting, called “17 October 1905.” All in all it is a magnificent museum which you could easily spend days pouring over if you were more educated in art than I am. I definitely appreciated most of what we saw and thoroughly enjoyed the three or four hours we spent there. I may have to go back again before we leave to look through some of my favorite rooms again. (P.S. again the architecture was of greater interest to me than some of the art, think me crazy if you want to, but just wait until you see the photos in the guidebooks and you will get it. These people lived in houses that are artworks in and of themselves. I wonder if they really appreciated it?)