The Sculptures of St. Petersburg, Russia

Unlike many of these places that I blog about that I want to visit, I've actually been to St. Petersburg. Not recently, of course. This was about fourteen years ago, and I went in the middle of winter with my husband. We were crazy, of course, but it was an amazing experience and so worth it. From the gorgeous architecture and brightly painted buildings to the eerily beautiful cemeteries and roomy town squares, I loved every minute of it. I remember walking into shops or buildings and I would start to thaw, mascara and phlegm running down my face. The instant I would walk back outside it would all freeze up again. Very cold, but so full of history and intrigue that it filled my blood and intoxicated me.

We stayed in the Hotel St. Petersburg, which at the time was undergoing renovation. We didn't have the money to stay in the nice rooms, so our room was an old communist un-breeding ground with two smaller-than-twin beds nailed to the walls end to end. My husband and I still managed to squeeze into one bed. That hotel freaked me out, there was no way I was sleeping alone. Did I mention the place was crawling with Russian mafia?

These beautiful equestrians are the four Horse Tamers by Baron Peter Clodt von Jurgensburg (say that five times fast). They stand on Anichkov bridge, like so: 


Anichkov Bridge, Nevsky Prospekt

You can see that two of them are across the road from each other facing the same way. The other two are on the opposite end of the bridge facing the other way. It's pretty spectacular. Here are all four of them up close: (Thanks to Saint-Petersburg.com for the pics)



The Horse Tamers

Another beautiful place in St. Petersburg is Peterhoff:

Peterhoff Palace

I'm not going to go into Peterhoff too much, but it's one of Mike's favorite places. It's filled with amazing fountains and beautiful statuary. And the statues are all made of gold (not pure gold, of course, they'd just fall apart). Bonus.

I think this next one is really interesting:

This memorial to Alexander the III is extremely controversial in St. Petersburg. It has an interesting story behind it, which you can read here. It's creator, Paolo Trubetskoy, didn't necessarily engage in the politics of the statue. He was commissioned to do it, and created this, an imposing yet heavy handed figure of the very disliked tsar Alexander the III.

This next statue is in front of Finland Station in St. Petersburg:



Lenin

I don't know much about this statue, but I do know this. There are still hundreds of Lenin statues in St. Petersburg, even today. Large ones, like these, and small ones, like the one my husband brought home. No, we're not communists. He's a sculptor, remember? He loves a good statue. When I asked him why there were still a lot of monuments to Lenin, he explained that the Russians still loved Lenin. He seemed to be the gentler leader, which means the Russians (for the most part) hate Stalin. There are no monuments or statues to him anywhere. As numbers have it, he was more brutal in his mass murders than even Hitler.

Next is the Bronze Horseman:



Bronze Horseman

The Bronze Horseman is a monument to Peter the Great. It was commissioned to a French artist named Etienne Maurice Falconet by Catherine the Great. This is a pretty good statue, and I'm especially impressed by the poem that goes with it, by Aleksander Pushkin. Both the statue and the poem are inspired by true events.

I struggled a bit to find statuary of women, and though this one is a partial nude, I really like it:



The Goddess Pax

This is a statue of the goddess Pax in the Pavlovsk Garden in St. Petersburg. I didn't have the chance to visit this garden, but it's beautiful in the picture. I don't know much about the Greek goddess, except that she's associated with spring and is often seen carrying an olive branch. I like the lion at her feet. I'm one of those that would like to have a tame lion, if there were ever such a thing. They're powerful yet amazingly graceful animals.

The last thing I want to touch on is the Hermitage:



Hermitage

I've already talked about the Hermitage and the many, many artworks they have there. If you look closely at this picture, you can see that there is actually statuary on the façade and roof of the Winter Palace. The building, in and of itself, is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. We spent so many hours in this building; it was absolutely stunning. Not only that, but they had this great Egyptian exhibit downstairs when we were there, and I got to see a real mummy. It was gross, but fascinating at the same time.

That's all for now, but happy sculpture hunting in the meantime. If you see any fantastic sculptures, let me know!