L.A.TARASOVA
The sculpture collection at the Department of the History of Russian Culture includes works by Russian sculptors and foreigners who worked in Russia. Chronologically, the collection spans the period between the first quarter of the 18th and the early 20th century. The sculptural works fall into different genres, including portraits (statues, busts and bas-reliefs); sketches and models of monuments; animalistic sculptures; genre compositions in different materials (marble, bronze and other metals, majolica, terra cotta, wood, plaster-of-Paris and wax).
The collection contains unique sculptures by Bartolomeo Carlo Rastrelli (1695-1744), whose art familiarized Russian masters with the European artistic tradition and became the foundation for the creation of the national sculptural school. Rastrelli's works kept at the Hermitage represent the first secular sculpture in Russia. These include the bronze bust of A.D. Menshikov, Governor General of St Petersburg (1717) - the first sculptural portrait created in Russia; the wax (1719) and bronze (1723) busts of Peter the Great; "the Wax Effigy" (1725) - a posthumous memorial portrait of Peter the Great; bronze bas-relief compositions depicting the renowned battles of the Northern War intended for the Triumphal Column (1720s); medallions with portraits of Empress Anna (1732), Peter the Great and Empress Elizabeth (1741-1743).
M.-A. Collot (1748-1821) and J.-D. Rachette (1744-1809) were among the late 18th-century European masters who worked in Russia for a long time and whose works have been included in the collection.
The works by members of the St Petersburg academic school of sculpture are the gems of the late 18th-century collection: a marble figure of Apollo (1789) and a model for the monument to A.V. Suvorov (1801, marble, granite) by M.I. Kozlovsky (1753-1802); busts of N.V. Repnin (1791, majolica) and A.N. Samoilov (c. 1798, marble) by F.I. Shubin (1740-1805); marble statues of G.A. Potemkin (c. 1793) by I.P. Martos and The Nymph of the Well (1780s) by F.F. Shchedrin.
Russian sculpture of the first half of the 19th century is represented by such remarkable masters as B.I. Orlovsky, V.I. Demut-Malinovsky, S.I. Galberg, M.I. Ivanov, A.V. Loganovsky, N.S. Pimenov and P.J. Clodt. The most interesting works include: the marble bust of Emperor Alexander I (1822) by B.I. Orlovsky, for which the sculptor was freed from serfdom, enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts and sent to study under B. Thorvaldsen in Rome; Orlovsky's first project models for the monuments to military leaders M.I. Kutuzov and M.B. Barclay de Tolly in front of the Kazan Cathedral in St Petersburg (c. 1830, wood); a bronze model for the statue of Catherine the Great for the Conference Hall at the Academy of Fine Arts (1834) by S.I. Galberg; the marble statue of Abaddon (1842) made by A.V. Loganovsky during his apprenticeship in Rome on commission from Grand Duke Alexander Nikolayevich and later placed in the White Hall of the Winter Palace; the large bust of Emperor Nicholas I in ancient Russian armour (1860, marble) by N.S. Pimenov, which was long kept in the Pavilion Hall of the Small Hermitage.
An undisputed breakthrough for Russian small-scale sculpture is marked by the works by F.P. Tolstoy (1783-1873), who was a long-term head of the medal-making class and Vice-President of the St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. The collection contains rare examples of his early work, as well as medallions from the series commemorating the Anti-Napoleonic War of 1812 and the European campaigns of the Russian army of 1813-1814 (1820-1836, plaster-of-Paris).
The second half of the 19th and the early 20th century were a time of new trends and changing styles. This period is represented by works by E.A. Lansere, M.A. Chizhov, M.O. Mikeshin, A.M. Opekushin, M.M. Antokolsky etc.
Models of monuments are by far the most interesting part of the collection: two versions of the equestrian statue of Nicholas I in the Isaac Square (P.K. Сlodt, 1856, bronze, cast iron); monument to Catherine the Great opposite the Alexandra Theatre in St Petersburg (M.O. Mikeshin, M.A. Chizhov, 1873, bronze, granite) and the monument to the "Thousand Years of Russia" in Novgorod (M.O. Mikeshin, 1862, bronze, marble), etc.
The masterpieces by well-known sculptors as well as works by less important artists at the Hermitage serve to supplement the country's major sculptural collections.
