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Peter the Great and the Sculpture of Italy Sergey Androsov's book Peter the Great and the Sculpture of Italy is an addition to his publications dealing with Peter I's collections. It is very interesting both as a history of art and art collecting in Russia and as a history of St Petersburg. This monograph has been issued by the Ars Publishing House in St Petersburg in 2004 with financial support from UNESCO. The book has a foreword by Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky and by UNESCO General Director Koichiro Matsuura. The work has been published in Russian and Italian and has a great quantity of illustrations. It has a detailed catalogue of all 142 works of Italian sculpture which were imported into Russia at the start of the 18th century for the collections of Peter the Great and members of his entourage A. D. Menshikov and F. M. Apraksin. There is great diversity in the marble sculpture which decorates the parks and gardens of St Petersburg, from the very famous Summer Garden to the modest sized Hanging Garden within the walls of the Hermitage and the summer residences of the Russian tsars (Peterhof, Pushkin, Pavlovsk). All these works are linked by a common history. Once they belonged to Peter the Great or his entourage and were acquired in Italy by special orders. The history of the purchase of sculpture is examined in the book on the basis of numerous archival documents which make it possible to determine precisely when and where a work was produced and its price. Most of the statues and busts were made by Venetian masters between 1716 and 1725 under the supervision of Count Savva Lukich Vladislavich-Raguzinsky (1669-173 8), who was in the Russian service and lived in Venice from 1716-1722. A special chapter is devoted to analysis of these works. It should be mentioned that Androsov managed to identify the sometimes little known sculptors of these statues made for Petersburg. The works of several sculptors were unknown even in Venice until recently. Another of Peter the Great's agents, Yuri Ivanovich Kologrivov (circa 1690-1754) was active mainly in Rome, where he bought ancient sculptures, copies of the ancient sculptures and also works by 17th century masters. It was he who succeeded in acquiring the famous Tauride Venus that is now kept in the Hermitage. The book also mentions the plans for purchasing sculptures which did not succeed for one reason or another, for example the attempt to buy 100 statues from the Duke of Massa, Alderano Cibo. This information gives us a broader understanding of Peter the Great's unique interest in sculpture, which is all the more remarkable given that until the end of the 17th century Russia had no experience with sculpture in the round due to prohibitions by the Orthodox Church. The author of the monograph, Sergey Olegovich Androsov, is a doctor of art history and Director of the Sector of 19th-20th century painting and sculpture within the State Hermitage's Department of the history of Western European art. |
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