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Stroganov Palace (17 Nevsky Prospekt) is part of the State Russian Museum.
The house at the Police Bridge, as the bridge across the Moika used to be called, belonged to the Stroganov for almost two centuries.
1742-1752: Purchase of plots of tailor Neumann and cook Shestakov
The site on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and the Moika embankment originally belonged to the tailor Johann Neumann. Built in 1738-1742 according to a project developed by M. Zemtsov, the two houses purchased by Stroganov were a single structure separated by a wide gate in the center.
The unfinished building in 1742 was acquired by brothers Nikolai and Sergey Stroganov. The house stood at the intersection of Nevskaya Prospect and Moika, from the shadow side. In line with the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin (Kazan Mother of God). Baron Sergei Stroganov settled here next to the court cook Shestakov and wanted to buy his part from Shestakov, located next to Nevsky Prospekt.
Although the cook disagreed, the circumstances were against him.
On November 2, 1752, Sergei Grigorievich Stroganov told his son Alexander, who had left for Europe to study: "Our St. Petersburg house burned to the ground and in the same place I began to build a new and so huge and with such decorations both inside and outside that the surprise is worthy."
1756: Baroque Palace built by F.B. Rastrelli
Stroganovsky Palace in St. Petersburg is a unique monument of residential architecture of the Baroque style, built by F. B. Rastrelli (1700-1771) by order of Baron S. G. Stroganov (1707-1756) in 1753-1756.
Grigory Dmitrievich's middle son, Nikolai, passed off his daughter as the brother of Catherine І, Martyn Skavronsky. When the youngest son of Grigory Stroganov, Sergei, asked Empress Elizabeth Petrovna to allow Rastrelli to build him a new house, the empress could not refuse the property.
According to another version, the Stroganovs, like their ancestors, continued to act as one of the largest creditors of the court. This was the reason why the empress made an exception for them.
Planning
Unlike manor houses with Kurdoners in front and gardens in the depths, this is precisely the city palace. Its facades overlook the red lines of the avenue and the embankment of the Moika River, inside there is a ceremonial closed courtyard.
Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli had a fascinating task: on the one hand, to erect not a manor, but a house worthy of a rich and radiant nobleman, and on the other, not to violate the authorities' order on the appearance of the Nevskaya perspective.
And also: so that the view of the house from the Moika embankment is as esteemed and majestic as from Nevsky. Many dignitaries lived along the river, and the baron wanted his house to take a decent place in this row.
Rastrelli adapted the house of the tailor I.G. Neumann for part of the future palace. The architect used existing structures, adding a third floor, and combining them with a single facade.
Rich and educated, Sergey Grigorievich Stroganov did not spare money on the construction of his new house. He convinced the architect to temporarily settle in the unfinished palace. Let him observe the work every day and hourly. Baron Stroganov happily informs his son that Count Rastrelli lives with him in his house, in his, Alexandrovs, chambers, and in the evenings he often talks with the architect.
Stroganov's house is the first private house built by Rastrelli in the system of regulated urban development. The first and only surviving.
He immediately attracts attention among the nearby buildings of Nevsky Prospekt. It is convenient to see it from the opposite side, from the corner where Leblon once lived.
The appearance of the palace with losses has survived to the present, and of the interiors only the Great Hall and the Rastrelli Lobby.
Facades in the Italian manner
Facade along Nevsky Prospekt
The architect's plan is revealed gradually. In order not to violate the red line of the street, the house is deprived of the front entrance. It has three floors, but thanks to its witty horizontal division, you perceive it initially as two-story.
The foundation of the house, processed into rust, is massive. It is a pedestal for the entire structure. (Alas, two centuries have increased the level of the pavement, and today the house is lower than it was originally. The windows of the first floor were shortened by a whole third).
The second and third floors look like a single unit. And this is understandable. The second floor is the main floor. The small square windows of the third floor illuminated either the servants' rooms or the two-room halls.
The facade along Nevsky is plastically more saturated. The desire of Rastrelli and the sculpture of architectural forms was especially clearly manifested in the solution of the middle part of the main facade. Plastic expressiveness is achieved here, first of all, by the introduction of three-quarter columns of enchanting with their refined grace.
The center of the building on the Nevsky side is highlighted by a wide arch of entrance gates. They lead inside the spacious quadrangle of the yard. The large, juicy sculpted face of a lion protruding from a huge shell is the castle stone of the gate arch.
The central risalit is crowned with an onion pediment, accented by groups of columns assembled in bunches. The columns support a gently circular pediment with a break in the center. A gap is necessary. He frees up space for an intricate cartouche with the owner's coat of arms.
The second floor window, located between the paired columns, in a complex frame. Female bark figures support the platbands with cupids frozen in the playful movement. Above them, instead of a square window of the third floor, a round lucarna in an intricate baroque frame.
The pattern of window platbands is diverse. They took on the form of intricate relief compositions of complicated abris. The platbands that Rastrelli used to decorate the front floor windows are unique. The architect never repeated them anywhere else. The strict frames end at the top with rounded eaves sheltering the lion's snouts from the weather.
Below, under the windows, in round medallions, there are bas-reliefs of a man's head, somewhat reminiscent of a portrait of the owner of the palace. Some historians claim that the famous architect placed his own profile on the walls of the palace, as a kind of author's signature, in order to perpetuate his work. There is also speculation that a medallion with a mysterious profile on the Stroganov Palace appeared later when the facade was completed by Wallen Delamot.
According to Rastrelli himself, initially, "four large statues depicting four parts of the world" (Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas) were also installed on the main facade between the columns. In addition, on both sides of the gables were sculptural groups, and balconies supported the figures of Atlanteans. These details can be seen on the old view of the Stroganov Palace, captured by the artist M. Makhaev in the middle of the 18th century in the painting "Nevskaya Perspective Road Avenue from the Admiralty Triumphal Gate to the East."
Previously, the entrance to the palace from the avenue did not exist: on the main staircase and in the premises of the palace fell through the solemn porch, located in the main courtyard. Having missed the carriage, the oak gates on the facade tightly closed.
Front from the side of the Wash
The facade from the side of the Moika looks like it repeats the main, Nevsky facade, but it is drier. Instead of paired columns, four single ones support no longer a circular, but a triangular pediment with the Stroganov coat of arms.
The engraving of the mid-18th century shows that the balcony of the second floor is kept on the mighty shoulders of Atlanta. But now they are no longer there. The appearance of the house has become much more modest today.
According to Rastrelli himself, the facades are designed "in an Italian manner."
In 2003, the original painting was returned to the facades.
Great Hall
From the original decoration in the Stroganov Palace, a large hall has been preserved. This is the only genuine (not recreated) front interior of Rastrelli in St. Petersburg.
The stucco pattern of the north and south walls with half-figures of Atlanteans supporting the balconies, as well as the half-figures of the caryatids of the east wall, on which the cornice rests, were made by an unknown Italian master in the 1750s.
Decorative carvings around mirrors, desudeports and fireplaces of a later time.
Picturesque ceiling of Valeriani
The main attraction of the hall is the picturesque ceiling made by Giuseppe Valeriani (1708-1778). A promising architectural frame and a complex multi-figure composition against the background of the sky create the illusion of unlimited space.
The plot of the composition preaching creative virtue, wisdom and love for the arts is an encrypted message of Baron S. G. Stroganov to his son Count A. S. Stroganov, who are depicted in the upper left corner of the composition. Behind them is a circular temple on a rocky mountain resembling the Pantheon.
Allegories of the arts are presented in the lower right corner: Painting paints paintings, Music plays the flute, Poetry reads poetry, and Sculpture blows a bust. They are united by History, who laid tablets on Saturn's bent back.
In the center of the composition is the goddess of wisdom and the patron of the arts Minerva, expelling vices: Treachery, Power Love, Slander and Envy.
Minerva became a symbol of Russian enlightenment (Catherine II was later often called Northern Minerva).
Finally, in the left corner there are virtues: Justice, Truth, Resilience, Loyalty, Courage and Strength (carries a column on the basis of which the signature of the artist Valeriani stands). Next to Fidelity is an old man in brass and with a book: probably Asclepius.
Six desudeports illustrate fragments from the story of Aeneas, the mythological hero of Virgil's poem.
In the 1790s, A.N. Voronikhin made some changes to the interior: chandeliers appeared, made in the workshop of I. Fisher according to the project of A. Gervais, furniture sets and fireplaces, above which portraits of Emperor Alexander І and his wife Empress Elizabeth Alekseevna were placed by J.-L. Monnier. Chandeliers and fireplaces are still preserved, the headset has been lost and recreated from preserved models, portraits left their places in 1929 after the closure of the palace as a museum.
In Soviet times, the space of the hall was divided by temporary partitions, which led to damage to the decorative decoration. Despite the major restoration of the hall in 1953-54, by the time the palace was transferred to the Russian Museum, the interior was in a very neglected state. For example, the parquet, covered with linoleum, no longer envisaged restoration, but was subject to complete reconstruction.
The restoration of the interior was completed by 2003, and in 2024 the recreated parquet was repaired.
Stroganov commissions Rotary portrait of Rastrelli
On October 12, 1754, the St. Petersburg Vedomosti informed: "Lieutenant General Baron Sergei Grigorievich Stroganov gave a ball in his new house, built on Nevsky Prospekt by Count Rastrelli..."
As far as we know, Sergey Grigorievich turned out to be the only customer who decided to pay tribute to the famous architect. In the summer of 1756, when the famous painter Pietro Rotary arrived in Russia, Stroganov ordered him a portrait of Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli.
A lot of energy and money demanded this order from Stroganov. Immediately after his arrival, the painter began to paint a portrait of the empress, then the grand duke, and then persons close to the court. Elizabeth allowed a foreign maestro to paint a portrait of an architect outside the established hierarchical series.
The portrait was hung in the White Hall, where he invariably stayed until the October Revolution of 1917.
1791: Classicistic interiors of F.I. Demertsov and A.N. Voronikhin
A terrible fire in the nineties of the XVIII century destroyed almost all the premises of the house. And then the serf Stroganovs, architect A.N. Voronikhin, re-created the inner chambers.
Of the fifty halls once performed by F.-B. Rastrelli, only one has survived to this day. The descendants of the baron named him after the architect.
In 1788-1791, F.I. Demertsov and A.N. Voronikhin (1759-1814) built new outbuildings in the courtyard and created an ensemble of classical interiors, which includes the Picture Gallery, the Corner and Arabesque Halls, and the Mineral Office.
At that time, the palace was owned by Count A. S. Stroganov, a major philanthropist, president of the Academy of Arts. He largely contributed to the formation of the work of the outstanding architect, his former serf Andrei Voronikhin.
Main staircase
The space of the Main Staircase was decorated by F.-B. Rastrelli in the Baroque style, but in the late XVIII - early KhІKh centuries. A.N. Voronikhin completely rebuilt it, turned the direction of the marches in the opposite direction, which was associated with the transfer of the entrance to the palace to Nevsky Prospekt and the construction of the New Front for passage to the front enfilada.
The decor of the stairs has also changed: instead of stucco and gilding, strict rust and Doric columns of different heights supporting granite marches of steps, which creates the image of the ruins of the ancient Greek temple.
In 1833, the staircase was again rebuilt by I. Charlemagne, when he was building an extension to the courtyard entrance in the northwestern corner of the courtyard. The second floor window was laid, with the exception of the upper semicircular part.
During the restoration work carried out in the 1990s, the painting of the ceiling was recreated on the basis of fragments discovered during clearing that imitate a caissed vault and an open sky.
In the blind lunettes, instead of windows, mirrors were installed with bindings applied to them, similar to the preserved semicircular window of the second floor. In addition, the floor level was lowered to a historical mark, which allowed the columns to be returned to the original proportions and profiles of canneliers.
The handrail of the mahogany staircase was restored with a recreation of the inlay.
In addition, the southern and eastern outbuildings were added, and most of the front interiors were re-decorated. For a century and a half, their appearance has changed repeatedly in accordance with fashion changes and the needs of new owners. Among the architects who were engaged in the reconstruction of interiors were K. Rossi, I. Kolodin, P. Sadovnikov and others.
1859: Arabesque Hall
The so-called Arabesque Hall was inscribed in the Cabinet (Museum) of Count Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov (1736-1811), presumably at the turn of the 1850s and 1860s.
An unusual living room is located next to the offices of Count Sergei Grigorievich Stroganov (1794-1882), which makes you see in it the customer of all three interiors whose architect could be M. A. Makarov, who worked in other possessions of the dynasty. To decorate the hall, copies of Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican were used.
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