Westernization As Consumption: Estate Building in the Moscow Region During the Eighteenth Century Author(S): Albert J

Westernization as Consumption: Estate Building in the Moscow Region during the Eighteenth Century Author(s): Albert J. Schmidt Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , Dec., 1995, Vol. 139, No. 4 (Dec., 1995), pp. 380-419 Published by: American Philosophical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/987237

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ALBERT J. SCHMIDT

The George Washington University

evolutions in architecture and the revamping and building of cities in eighteenth-century Russia have been variously explored in recent years.1 Similarly, the notion of a "consumer revolution" in Western Europe has produced a trove of scholarship. Neil McKendrick's description of a "consumer revolution" in England to one degree or other applied to Western Europe:

More men and women than ever before in human history enjoyed the experience of acquiring material possessions.... What men and women had once hoped to inherit from their parents, they now expected to buy for themselves. What were once bought at the dictate of need, were now bought at the dictate of fashion. What were once bought for life, might now be bought several times over.2

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the IV World Slavic Congress, Harro- gate, England, in the summer of 1990. I wish to thank Professors Elizabeth Schmidt, John Alexander, and Seymour Becker for their critiques and Carole LeFaivre-Rochester and Susan Babbitt of the American Philosophical Society for their careful editing of this paper. The author acknowledges the permission granted by Russian Embassy authorities to reproduce drawings and photographs appearing in old Soviet publications which ante-date the present copyright agreement. 1 For more on an architectural revolution, see James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago, 1988) and Albert J. Schmidt, The Architecture and Planning of Classical Moscow: A Cultural History (Philadelphia, 1989). 2 Neil McKendrick, "Introduction, The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England," in McKendrick, John Brewer, J. H. Plumb, eds., The Birth of a Consumer Society (Bloomington, Indiana, 1985). For more on the scope of recent scholarship on consumption, see David Levine's review, "Consumer Goods and Capitalist Modernization," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 22:1 (1991), 67-77; John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (New York, 1993) and John Brewer, ed., Consumption & Culture in the 17th & 18th Centuries: A Bibliography (Los Angeles, 1991). This is a compilation of over 2,500 entries-by Dorothy Auyong, Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter-published by the UCLA Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, VOL. 139, NO. 4, 1995

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If, during the eighteenth century, consumption governed the behavior and tastes of affluent Western Europeans, the question must be asked whether it had a role to play in Russia's Westernization during that century. The purpose here is to examine this matter. Indeed, it is to join Catherinian Russia's building spree and the elegance of its aristocratic material culture with Europe's compulsion to consume -in order to offer a new perspective on, even one explanation of, Russia's "Westernization."3 Russia's appropriation of Western architectural styles was but half the story of its assumption of European culture. The other half was partici- pation, admittedly one limited largely to the autocracy, the great nobility, and a few wealthy merchant families, in Europe's consumption binge - as represented by palatial mansions, their accoutrements, and related as- pects of material culture.4 Catherine II herself epitomized the prevailing mood in a letter to her confidant, Friedrich Melchior Grimm:

Our storm of construction now rages more than ever before, and it is unlikely that an earthquake could destroy as many buildings as we are erecting. Construc- tion is a sort of devilry, devouring a pile of money, and the more you build, the

3 The present focus on architecture should not obscure aristocratic Russia's aggressive undertaking to consume other delights of European material culture. See Herbert H. Kaplan, "Russian Commerce and British Industry: A Case Study in Resource Scarcity in the Eighteenth-Century," in A. G. Cross, ed., Russia and the West in the Eighteenth Century (Newtonville, MA, 1983), 325-47. Ian Blanchard, Russia's Age of Silver': Precious-Metal Pro- duction and Economic Growth in the Eighteenth Century (London and New York, 1989) enumer- ates Russian imports: A huge variety of metal wares, made from iron, brass, and copper, many of them beautifully crafted versions of everyday items, glasses of different types and sizes, furniture of all kinds, clocks, wallpaper, carpets, and materials for curtains, bed linen, and table linens, silver cutlery and plate, porcelain and fine glassware were all imported to adorn the houses of the rich.... elegant carriages with well-bred horses accoutered with handmade harness, and, to indulge their leisure pursuits, sporting guns, fishing rods, playing cards, gaming pieces, scientific instruments, objets d'art, as well as bloodstock for hunting and racing, and dogs for sporting purposes (pp. 275-76). See also Arcadius Kahan, The Plow, The Hammer, and The Knout: An Economic History of Eighteenth Century Russia (Chicago, 1985), 265. Anthony G. Cross, "The British in Catherine's Russia: A Preliminary Survey," in J. G. Garrard, ed., The Eighteenth-Century (Oxford, 1973), 233-63, discussing Russian Anglomania, cites such English imports as books, maps, prints, furniture, clothing, hard-ware, horses, carriages, hats, leather, medi- cine, beer, cloth, horses, coal, and pottery (pp. 242-43). One Francis Gardner established the Gardner porcelain factory at Verbilki, near Moscow. English craftsmen-watchmakers, stonemasons, shoemakers, saddlers, grooms, ostlers, blacksmiths, and handlers of hounds-made themselves available (p. 246). Walter Gleason, "The Image of the West in the Journals of Mid-Eighteenth Century Russia," in Cross, Russia and the West, 109-15, describes a reaction within Russia to this obsession with things English. For the writer Fonvizin it evoked the image of a decadent West (p. 110). R. E. F. Smith and David Christian, Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia (Cambridge, 1984) and N. M. Karamzin, Letters of a Russian Traveler (New York, 1957) further recite the litany of Russian consumption. In England, Kararnzin re- marked on the paintings and antiques in the country houses, observing that "artists once admired in Italy . . . [are] buried forever in a country castle" (p. 325). He was also duly impressed with the parks in which these great English houses were situated, their green- houses, and fruits and plants brought from all corners of the earth. For more on traveling Russians, see A. G. Cross, "By the Banks of the Thames": Russians in Eighteenth Century Britain (Newtonville, MA, 1980). 4 Wealthy merchants like the Gubins and Barishnikovs also figured prominently on the Moscow building scene.

This content downloaded from 129.2.19.103 on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:58:59 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 382 ALBERT J. SCHMIDT more you want to build. It's simply a disease, something like a drinking fit-or, perhaps, just a habit.5

While the empress and her court built and consumed lavishly, Moscow's grandees and the nobility who lived in the Moscow region strived not to be outdone. As Prince Iusupov observed about his prize possession: "Since Arkhangel'skoe [estate] is not kept for income but rather to cost money and be enjoyed, one has to do one's best to buy what is rare and to make everything better than it is elsewhere."6 The ostentatious estates of the Moscow countryside -"things" derived from English, French, and Italian models7-were regarded only in the context of the site they occupied: houses in parks, which profoundly altered the landscape by combining nature and art. They constituted-as one author observed of the English landscape garden-the "ultimate humanized, 'authored' landscape" and were, above all, to be looked at-that is, visually consumed.8 Despite their "Palladian" look, estate houses on humanized landscapes were only occasionally the creations of renowned

5 As quoted in William Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture (Cambridge, 1993), 262 and Antoine Cheneviere, Russian Furniture: The Golden Age 1780-1840, transl. by Anna Borisovna Bely and Marilyn Caron-Delion (New York, 1988). I have used Brumfield's translation. 6 As quoted in M. A. Il'in, "Russian Parks of the Eighteenth Century," The Architectural Review, 135.804 (1964), 109. M. L. Bush, Rich Noble, Poor Noble (Manchester, 1988) eloquently describes noble ideals of consumption. The downside of this extravagance was noble indebtedness. See especially Arcadius Kahan, "The Costs of 'Westernization' in Russia: The Gentry and the Economy in the Eigh- teenth Century," Slavic Review, 25.1 (March, 1966) and reprinted in Michael Cherniavsky, ed., The Structure of Russian History (New York, 1970), 224-50. The following letter from I. G. Chernyshev to Catherine II (p. 224) is particularly revealing: I leave my inheritors in extreme poverty, since my debts, most illustrious Madam, exceed half a million rubles - [they accumulated] during my thirty years of service in the Admiralty, where, particularly in the beginning, I was compelled to entertain many guests, to feed almost everybody, and to get them accustomed not only to high society but also to affluence. 7 The question inevitably asked is where and in what kind of dwellings did the nobility reside before rococo and Palladian styles took hold in the eighteenth century. Ostentatious building either in or beyond Moscow was really not an option for servitor nobles and certainly did not characterize the lifestyle of the nobility generally before the second half of the eighteenth century. There are, however, a few surviving examples of Moscow palatial dwellings in essentially what we now call the seventeenth-century "national style." See N. I. Brunov, et al., Istoriia russkoi arkhitektury (Moscow, 1956), 246-58 for a discussion and illustrations of Korobov house in Kaluga, Ivanov house in Iaroslavl' and in particular the V. V. Golitsyn, Iushkov, and Lefortovskii palaces in Moscow, all built at the end of the seventeenth century. 8 Michael Williams, "Historical Geography and the Concept of Landscape," Journal of Historical Geography, 15.1 (1989), 95. See also M. Samuels, "The Biography of Landscape," in D. W. Meinig, ed., The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes (New York, 1979), 63, 70. Just as the estates were symbols of consumption so were these landscapes manifestations of "power, capital and status" (D. E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape [Becken- ham, 1984], 54-65). William C. Brumfield tells of the hard times that have befallen many of these estate houses. See "Country Roads, Somewhere near Moscow," The Woodrow Wilson Center Report, 4.4 (1993), 1-4, in which he describes Ol'govo estate, "a masterpiece of elegant design, still standing a decade ago but now a heap of ruins while a tourist colony develops on the picturesque premises" (p. 3). Similarly, Brumfield has shown in his History of Russian Archi- tecture, plate 68, the ruins of the Demidov mansion at Petrovskoe-Alabino.

This content downloaded from 129.2.19.103 on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:58:59 UTC4:56 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ESTATE BUILDING IN THE MOSCOW REGION 383 architects: most often they were the undertakings of serf architects who had but studied the works of the masters. The marvel of classicism was its adaptability. Here consumption by the Catherinian nobility-their appropriation of Western material culture and taste -is treated by focusing on their estates in the Moscow region. I shall identify the most prominent of these holdings, describe their opulence, and name, when possible, the architects who worked on them. Before doing so, however, I shall address an obvious question-whence came this new scale of living, this sudden affluence?

ESTABLISHING A CONTEXT

Despite a Peter the Great to inaugurate the new century, it was not pre- ordained that the eighteenth century would be a "golden age" for Russia's nobility. Indeed, Peter I's blueprint for enhancing the autocracy required continuing with, or even accentuating, both a servitor nobility and an enserfed peasantry. With Peter III in 1762 and Catherine II the next year, this delicate balance was altered when the nobility was freed of its obligations to serve the state;9 serf peasants, however, failed to win even a modest reprieve. Instead, they were forced to endure the harsh- ness of the system for another century. Serfdom lasted because it was profitable, at least for a few. We are told that Russia after Peter experienced a "price revolution," of a magnitude not unlike that of Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that this phenomenon caused an equalizing of Russia's and Europe's prices.10 Increased stocks of money from an acceleration of commerce and extraction of precious metals were partly responsible,1"

9 Peter III's ukazy granting freedom from service to the nobility were eventually confirmed in a manifesto by Catherine II. Although nobles continued to serve the state after 1763, they did so through choice, not compulsion. Those who remained in state service often served Catherine II in her many wars. The Russian nobility in 1763 was a very disparate and therefore complex lot. Arguably, it was divided among a Western-oriented court noblesse consisting of both old and new families anxious to enhance their social status, a similar court element of much the same background but committed to a continuance of state service, and then a larger segment dedi- cated to the enhancement of their economic position. The first, and to a lesser degree the second, group engaged in estate building after emancipation or as a reward for service. Cf. Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven, CT, 1981), 81-89. Madariaga believes that "the literary and artistic interests of the latter half of the eighteenth century flourished because of the new freedom and self respect of the nobility" (p. 89). In this paper I simply use the term "noble" or "nobility" in connection with the massive estate-building of the late eighteenth century. 10 Boris Mironov, "Consequences of the price revolution in eighteenth-century Russia," Economic History Review, 45.3 (August 1992), 457-78. Mironov does comment on the cultural dimensions of the price revolution: Enormous sums of money which the nobility earned from the revolution in prices were spent on foreign travel, education, and the purchase of European goods, all of which promoted the Europeanization of its life style and mentalitW (p. 475). 11 See Blanchard, Russia's Age of Silver,' passim and Hugh D. Hudson, The Rise of the Demidov Family and the Russian Iron Industry in the Eighteenth Century (Newtonville, MA, 1986).

This content downloaded from 129.2.19.103 on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:58:59 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 384 ALBERT J. SCHMIDT but the principal determinant was income from the increased production and export of grain in the last decades of the century.'2 This mobilization of agriculture for the domestic and foreign markets to a considerable degree by-passed the towns and merchants, the boom being essentially a rural one based on serfdom. Unfortunately, the monies accumulated by the seignorial nobility were seldom reinvested; instead, they went for luxuries, mostly from abroad, and foreign travel and education. In brief, the unprecedented income that accrued to a for- tunate few-those with huge estates and thousands of serfs - contributed to their "Westernization." It was a costly process, as attested to by Arca- dius Kahan.'3 Beyond these costs, consumption created or deepened cleavages between lord and peasant and within the nobility itself, discon- tinuities that were to prove critical to the course of Russian history.'4 Although some 40,000-50,000 noble landowners established themselves in such distant places as Novgorod, Arkhangel'sk, Perm', Kazan', Iaroslavl', Nizhnii Novgorod, and Saratov, fortune especially favored the relatively few in the heartland around Moscow, Tver', and Vladimir.'5 Wealth for them, however, was measured not in estates but in serfs - those who worked their fields, the communities of artisans and architects, the countless household servants, and those who performed in ac- tors' troupes, choirs, and orchestras. The best years of the Russian nobility-from the 1770s until the new century-were, accordingly, those of greatest estate development.

BUILDING IN RUSSIA

If old Russia projected the image of the onion-domed church or village monastery, Catherinian Russia's emblem, whether in town or country, was the classical facade. In its urban context it was the hallmark of a considerable public works effort, which included schools, hospitals, pharmacies, asylums, homes for the aged, jails, fire stations, markets, orphanages, and, of course, administrative buildings -all required to ac- commodate burgeoning services and bureaucracy. In a sense, all of this resulted from the planning of new or re-planning of old Russian towns, hundreds of them. This feverish refurbishment also produced a town en- vironment conducive to estate-building, which parallelled that in the countryside.'6

12 Jennifer Newman, "The Russian Grain Trade 1700-1779," in Walter Minchinton, ed., The Baltic Grain Trade (Exeter, 1985) discusses the notable expansion of grain exports after 1760 (pp. 58-59). Herbert H. Kaplan, "Russian Commerce and British Industry: A Case Study in Resource Scarcity in the Eighteenth-Century," in A. G. Cross, Russia and the West, explains how Russia maintained a favorable balance of trade with Great Britain from 1715 to 1801. The best English-language work on eighteenth-century Russia's economy is Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout. 13 "The Costs of 'Westernization' in Russia," passim. 14 See N. D. Chechulin, Russkoe provintsial'noe obshchestvo (Moscow, 1909) and Mironov, "Consequences of the Price Revolution," 475. 15 Paul Dukes, Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility (Cambridge, 1967), 11-12. 16 For planning of new towns see Robert E. Jones, "Urban Planning and the Develop-

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Russian nobles imitated their English brethren in building enchanting Palladian mansions, and both the English and French in their rococo/ classical interiors, their furnishings, gardens, and parks.'7 Excepting a few who commissioned Gothic edifices, the nobility uncritically adopted the dome and portico as their emblem of identity. Despite the glistening rococo and chinoiserie of the Chinese rooms of Oranienbaum, the Great Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, and other palaces of Petersburg and its suburbs, Russian taste in these styles was more serene than south German or even Polish and Lithuanian. Park design leaned toward rus- ticity, influenced by the English creations of Capability Brown. Gardens adjacent to the great houses, however, were usually formal, drawing on French antecedents. When the provincial nobility of Catherine II's Russia set about to em- bellish their rural holdings, they had before them baroque, rococo, and even early classical models in St. Petersburg. They were, indeed, the ben- eficiaries of a half century or so of Westernization that had completely transformed the building profession and trades. Besides enticing architects from abroad to work on his city on the Neva and its monuments, Peter I had encouraged education of Russian architects through the translation and publication of Western architectural literature and by sending

ment of Provincial Towns in Russia during the Reign of Catherine II," in Garrard, The Eigh- teenth Century, 321-44. That this enterprise carried over into the Alexandrine reign is shown by Hans Blumenfeld, "Russian City Planning of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Cen- turies," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 4 (1944), 22-33; Blumenfeld, "Theory of City Form Past and Present," ibid. 8 (1949); A. J. Schmidt, "William Hastie, Scottish Planner of Russian Cities," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 114.3 (1970), 226-43; and V. Shkvarikov, Planirovka gorodov Rossii XVIII i nachala XIX veka (Moscow, 1939). For more on the functional diversity of the architecture of classicism, see G. K. Lukomskii, Arkhitektura russkoi provintsii (Moscow, 1916). Jones's observation that "towns were in the contradictory position of serving simultaneously as the home of the middle class and as centers for the surrounding countryside that was dominated by the nobility" (p. 331) should be modified. There were many nobles, "middle class" in their life-style and wealth, living in towns. 17 Russia's debt to the West in the arts is summarized by Tamara Talbot Rice, "The Conflux of Influences in Eighteenth-Century Russian Art and Architecture: A Journey from the Spiritual to the Realistic," J. G. Garrard, ed., The Eighteenth Century, 268-99. Rice discusses Russian appropriation of Western styles-the architect Rastrelli's employment of the rococo in the Amber Room and Malachite Hall in the Winter Palace and red Chinese lacquer room in Monplaisir at Peterhof (pp. 281-82), Charles Cameron's restrained Palladianism at Tsarskoe Selo and Pavlovsk, Capability Brown's landscape theory (p. 283) as applied in parks throughout European Russia, furniture as imported and copied since Peter's day (p. 285), architectural designs brought to Russia and also copied, and the popularity of por- traiture and landscape painting (p. 289). Rice cites the memoirs of Andrei Bolotov to illustrate Russian dependence on Western furniture models when he spoke of "our present-day sofas, canapes, armchairs, tambours, card tables, chests and the like, rondeaux, fancy little tables, and similar pieces of furniture ... not to be found in middle- and lower-middle-class homes" (p. 286). Charles Cameron, who lavished marble and semi-precious stones, opaque glass, and painted and plaster designs upon his interiors, is the subject of a recent Soviet account in Dmitrii Shvidkovskii, "Arkhitektor Charl'z Kameron," Nashe nasledie 5 (1989), 136-47 For older surveys of Russian art for this period, see T. V. Aiekseeva, Russkoe iskusstvo XVIII veka (Moscow, 1968); N. N. Kovalenskaia, Istoriia russkogo iskusstva XVIII veka (Moscow, 1962); and Istoriia russkogo iskusstva pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Moscow, 1951).

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students to Europe to learn first-hand of new styles and techniques.'8 By Catherine's time cadres of foreign and Russian architects engaged in building numerous and diverse classical edifices. Their role in the building of manor houses in the Moscow region was facilitated by serf architects who both copied and embellished the designs of these masters.

ESTATE HOUSES WITHIN Moscow: EXAMPLES19

Although the Moscow region underwent an economic resurgence after 1730, the common perception is that the city itself was an architectural backwater compared to St. Petersburg. While it is true that Moscow continued to be big, dirty, wooden, and possessed of a silhouette of cupolas and tent spires - its appearance changed notably after 1760. A nobility energized by emancipation or rewarded for service soon dis- covered a life after Petersburg, particularly in and around Moscow. Their propensity to build resulted in a variety of estate edifices and the usual accessories - assembly halls, theaters, a university, and structures for provincial government. Taken together these advertised power and wealth as well as the nobility's insatiable appetite for material goods. The great houses of Moscow were quite as splendorous and massive as those in the country. Their monumental facades typically consisted of three horizontal sections separated by stringcourses or moldings. Each floor, generally three bays wide, was sectioned into nine rectangles with the main hall placed at the intersection of the middle vertical and horizontal bands. The dominance of this central entrance was facilitated by

18 For works shedding light on Russian exposure to Western architecture and learning see Max J. Okenfuss, "Russian Students in Europe in the Age of Peter the Great," in Garrard, The Eighteenth Century, 131-45; Lindsey A. J. Hughes, "Architectural Books in Petrine Russia" in Cross, Russia and the West, 101-08; Hughes, "Russia's First Architectural Books: A Chapter in Peter the Great's Cultural Revolution," Architectural Design, 53.5-6 (1983), 4-13; Hughes, "Westernization in Russian Architecture, 1680-1725," Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia Newsletter, 6 (Sept. 1978), 8-11; R. Lucas, "Innovation in Russian Architecture in Early Modern History: A Stylistic Survey," ibid., 4 (Sept. 1976), 17-24; James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture, 160-71; Albert J. Schmidt, The Archi- tecture and Planning of Classical Moscow, 30-35; 0. S. Evangulova, "O nekotorykh osoben- nostiakh moskovskoi arkhitekturnoi shkoly serediny XVIII v.," Russkii gorod, 1 (Moscow, 1976), 259-69. Most Moscow architects for this period have been listed in M. V. D"iakonov, "K biografi- cheskomu slovariu moskovskikh zodchikh XVIII-XIX vv.," in Russkii gorod, 1 (1976), 270-95; ibid., 2 (1979), 255-91; ibid., 3 (1980), 235-63; ibid., 4 (1981), 174-239; ibid., 5 (1982), 116-225. In Moscow the most notable architect to emerge about mid-century was Prince Dmitrii Vasil'evich Ukhtomskii (1719-1775), whose school nurtured a whole generation of architects who played a critical role in bringing classicism to Moscow (A. Mikhailov, Arkhitektor D. V Ukhtomskii i ego shkola [Moscow, 1954]). For studies of later foreign architects active in Russia, see A. G. Cross, "The British in Catherine's Russia: A Preliminary Survey," in J. Garrard, The Eighteenth Century, 233-63; Cross, "Charles Cameron's Scottish Workmen," Scottish Slavonic Review (Spring 1988), 51-73; and A. A. Tait, "British Architects in the Service of Catherine II," Charles Cameron c. 1740-1812, Catalogue of the Arts Council Exhibition (London, 1967), 25-26, for references to Adam Menelaws and William Hastie. See also A. K. Andreev, "Adam Menelas," in Problemy sinteza iskusstv i arkhitektury, Vyp. 3 (Leningrad, 1977), 38-58. 19 For a more detailed discussion, see Schmidt, Classical Moscow, pp. 84-99 and passim.

This content downloaded from 129.2.19.103 on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:58:59 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ESTATE BUILDING IN THE MOSCOW REGION 387 a majestic Ionic or Corinthian portico of six, eight, ten, or twelve columns. The remainder of the facade extending from the portico had variously three, five, seven, or nine windows. A large and ornate window, routinely on the axis of the portico, was flanked by the remaining windows in each of the lateral wings. A three-story residence customarily had a vestibule and servants' quarters on the ground floor, a center hall and suites of rooms for entertaining on the next floor, and bedrooms above that. Urban estate houses generally followed one of three distinctive plans. In one, the main block lay beyond the perimeter of the street, with its perpendicular wings forming a court. The L-shaped wings reached to the street and were each in turn linked by an ornamental iron fence and gate. A second and fundamentally different type of estate house skirted the street, reserving its main facade for an interior court. A third kind, frequently seen on the radial thoroughfares of Moscow, was necessarily limited to corner lots. From the main hall on the corner, lateral wings were extended along the intersecting streets. Typically cylindrical, the exterior of the hall was shielded by a colonnade and appeared as a domed rotunda. The house designed for Catherine's aging general I. I. Demidov by Moscow's premier architect of classicism, Matvei Fedorovich Kazakov (1738-1812), was in accord with the first plan (Fig. 1). This estate edifice, located in Gorokhovskii Alley, was esteemed as much for the elegance of its interior as for an imposing exterior (Fig. 2). A towering portico of six Corinthian columns dominated the otherwise plain facades of the central corpus and the two lateral ones. A pediment encrusted with relief sculpture contrasted with a facade rusticated at the ground level but smooth on the upper two. Besides inserting an arched entrance into the base of the portico, the architect capped the third of five middle-story windows on each side of the portico with a small pediment, running ro- sette reliefs across the same tier and edging the third-story apertures with a molding. Originally, the roof supported a balustrade above the attic. Characteristic of the second type was Kazakov's house for the merchant Gubin on the Petrovka (Fig. 3). Located just below Petrovskie Gates, it immediately ranked among Kazakov's and classical Moscow's most important edifices. This house's site on an elevated lot enhanced its dramatic Corinthian facade - a powerful portico and pediment and six massive columns. Typically, this portico rested on a high basement with rusticated walls. Many classical houses on the radial Miasnitskaia Street lay far to the rear of the estates, shielded by fences or stables on the street. Notable exceptions were those of the third type, such as Iushkov House of Vasilii Bazhenov (1737-1799) (Fig. 4). Erected after his completion of Pashkov House about 1790, this edifice represented the architect's turn from Italianate to restrained French classicism. The house occupied a corner where its two identical wings were joined at 90 degree angles by a half rotunda with a semicircular Ionic colonnade. A deep loggia created by

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FIGURE 1. Matvei Fedorovich Kazakov (1738-1812). Bust in the Architectural Museum in Donskoi Monastery, Moscow. Photo, A. J. Schmidt. the latter gave the building striking spaciousness. The lower level was rusticated, the upper surface flat. In all, this urban estate house with its meager detail and its power anticipated the Empire mode which prevailed a decade or two later.

CONSUMPTION ROMANTICIZED: THE COUNTRY ESTATE HOUSES

These great estate houses, impressive as they were in dominating the Moscow cityscape, found even greater fulfillment outside the city.20

20 Standard works on this subject are the following: M.A. Il'in, Podmoskov'e (Moscow, 1966); E. N. Pod"iapolskaia, ed., Pamiatniki arkhitektury moskovskoi oblasti, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1975); N. Ia. Tikhomirov, Arkhitektura podmoskovnykh usadeb (Moscow, 1955); M. I. Rzianin,

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FIGURE 2. I. I. Demidov House in Gorokhovskii Alley (1780s), Moscow. Architect, M. F. Kazakov. Photo, A. J. Schmidt. A_

FIGURE 3. Gubin House, (1790s), Moscow. Architect, M. F. Kazakov. Photo, A. J. Schmidt.

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FIGURE 4. Iushkov House (1780s-1790s), Moscow. Architect, V. I. Bazhenov. Photo, A. J. Schmidt.

Arkhitekturnye ansambli Moskvy i podmoskov'ia XIV-XIX veka (Moscow, 1950); and S. A. Toropov, Podmoskovnye usad'by (Moscow, 1947). Other relevant works are D. Arkin, Sukhanovo (Moscow, 1958); Olga Baranova, Kuskovo: 18th-Century Russian Estate and the Museum of Ceramics (Leningrad, 1983); N. Belekhov and A. Petrov, Ivan Starov (Moscow, 1950); Elena A., Beletskaia, Arkhitekturnye al'bomy M. F Kazakova (Moscow, 1956); N. Brunov, et al., eds., Istoriia russkoi arkhitektury; M. V. Budylina, 0. I. Braitseva, A. M. Kharlamova, Arkhitektor N.A. L'vov (Moscow, 1961); and L. I. Bulavina, et al., Arkhangel'skoe (Moscow, 1961). See also N. Danilova, "Ekonomicheskoe razvitie gorodov zapadnogo podmoskov'ia v pervoi polovine XIX v.," Russkii gorod, 4 (1981), 76-99; N. A. Elizarova, Ostankino (Moscow, 1966); 0. S. Evangulova, Dvortsovo-parkovye ansambli Moskvy pervoi poloviny XVIII veka (Mos- cow, 1969); I. Glozman, Kuskovo (Moscow, 1958 and 1966) and I. Glozman, ed., Kuskovo, Ostankino, Arkhangel'skoe (Moscow, 1976); M. A. Il'in, "Arkhitektura russkoi usad'by," in Igor Grabarf, Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, 6 (1961), 296-315; Il'in, Bazhenov (Moscow, 1954); Il'in, Kazakov (Moscow, 1955); Win, "K voprosu o russkikh usad'bakh XVIII v.," Russkii gorod 4 (1981), 157-73. See also V. V. Kirillov, "Arkhitektura i gradostroitel'stvo podmoskov'ia," Russkii gorod, 3 (1980), 120-34; L. A. Lepskaia, M. Z. Sarkisova, et al., Ostankinskii dvorets-muzei: tvorchestvo krepostnykh (Leningrad, 1982); A. I. Mikhailov, Bazhenov (Moscow, 1951); S. N. Palentreer, Usad'ba Voronovo (Moscow, 1960); A. N. Petrov, "S. I. Chebakinskii i drugie peter- burgskie mastera.," in I. Grabar' ed., Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, 5 (1960), 209-43; V. V. Poznanskii, Arkhangel'skoe (Moscow, 1966); F. Prokhorov, "Vedomosti' k mezhevym atlasam kak istochnik po istorii promyshlennosti i torgovli v gorodakh Podmoskov'ia v seredine 80-x godov XVIII v.." Russkii gorod, 4 (1981), 66-75; N. V. Razorenova, "Blizhaishee Pod- moskov'e v XVII-XVIII vv," Russkii gorod, 2 (1979), 141-60; A. P. Sedov, Egotov (Moscow, 1956) and Iaropolets (Moscow, 1980); S. A. Toporov, "Petrovskoe-Demidovykh [Alabino]," Sredi kollektsionerov, 7-8 (1924), 20-25; V. Snegirev, Arkhitektor V I. Bazhenov (Moscow, 1937), passim; and A. I. Vlasiuk, A. I. Kaplyn, & A. A. Kiparisova, Kazakov (Moscow, 1957). A. P. Vergunov and V. A. Gorokhov, Russkie sady i parki (Moscow, 1988) is the most detailed recent account. It contains an extensive bibliography including many works not

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FIGURE 5. Kuskovo. The Palace (built in 1751; rebuilt in the 1770s). Photo, A. J. Schmidt.

Country estates varied, depending upon the wealth of the family, the landscape, and the styles and tastes for different periods. It was assumed, nevertheless, that the manor house, determinant of the axis for the entire estate, would be possessed of the same symmetry, monumentality, and interior luxury as its urban counterpart. Sundry out-buildings -serf housing, stables, barns, pavilions, and tea houses -co-existed with the lord's house. A church or a serf theater was often a crucial element in such an ensemble. When the great house was erected on a river bank or near a large pond, both were meant to mirror the facade no less than to create a pleasing vista from within. The Kuskovo estate near Moscow belonged to the Sheremetev family first, Count Petr Borisovich (1713-1788) and then his son, Count Nikolai Petrovich (1751-1809) (Figs. 5, 6, 7). It evolved as a huge palace-park ensemble during the second half of the eighteenth century. Although of frame construction, the classical mansion itself assumed a masonry

cited in this paper. William Craft Brumfield's recent A History of Russian Architecture contains a good treatment of estate architecture in the Moscow region (pp. 303-19). That the theme continues to intrigue Western scholars was evidenced by a session de- voted to "The Poetics and Politics of Estate Life in Russia" at the 1994 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Thomas Newlin spoke on "Landscape, Labor, and Illusion on the Russian Estate, 1785-1815"; Priscilla Roosevelt's "Estate Life from Emancipation to Revolution," treated in part the deterioration of eighteenth-century estate edifices. Two works, both germane to this paper, have recently been published. They are Priscilla Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History (New Haven, CT,

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FIGURE 6. Kuskovo. The Grotto (1756-1762) Architect, F S. Argunov. Photo, A. J. Schmidt.

look- one classical facade with a protruding portico turned toward a large pond, and the other facing a parterre profuse with sculptures. The park buildings, invariably rococo, included an orangery at the far end of the parterre and such typical pleasure places as a Chinese summer house, a hermitage, so-called Holland and Italian houses, and an open air theater for performances by the serf troupe.21 Kuskovo's architects were drawn from the ranks of Sheremetev serfs, the principal ones being Aleksei Fedorovich Mironov (c. 1745-c. 1808), who eventually held forth at Moscow University; Grigorii Dikushin;22 and Fedor Semenovich Argunov (1733-1780), who was responsible for the grotto. Dementii Antonov, a serf of G. I. Golovin, was employed on the orangery, and Kuz'ma Buianov, who had a daughter in the theater troupe, on the main building. One D. Denisov and Boris Kurzin, who worked under Aleksei Mironov at the Sheremetev Indigents' Hospital (Strannopriimnyi House) in Moscow, were also at Kuskovo. Other serfs who used their architectural expertise on both Kuskovo and Ostankino are mentioned below.

1995) and William Craft Brumfield, Lost Russia (Durham, NC, 1995), which speaks eloquently in pictures as well as text about the deterioration of monuments mentioned in this paper. Both works appeared too late for consideration here. 21 See Priscilla R. Roosevelt, "Emerald Thrones and Living Statues: Theater and Thea- tricality on the Russian Estate," The Russian Review, 50.1 (1991), 1-23 and N. Elizarova, Teatry Sheremetevykh (Moscow, 1944). 22 I have drawn especially on S. V. Bezsonov, Krepostnye arkhitektory (Moscow, 1938) for serf architects.

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FIGURE 8. Ostankino, The Palace (1791 1798). Architects, P. I Argunov, A. F. Mironov, and G. Dikushin. Photo, A. J. Schmidt.

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The Sheremetev estate at Ostankino was laid out on a site that earlier had belonged to the Princes Cherkasskii (Figs. 8, 9). A church in the seventeenth-century national style, a relic of this Cherkasskii era, was subsequently incorporated in the later ensemble design. The exterior of the Ostankino block was imposing, if not distinctive. It was given the illusion of greater width by two corner pavilions, which in turn were extended by wings embracing a central courtyard. This front was less enchanting than the back: there the cupola of the great house, a six-column portico, and the columned pavilion facades were reflected in a pond. Formal gardens reached beyond this point. Ostankino, like Kuskovo, was designed and built by serfs. Aleksei Mironov and Grigorii Dikushin were brought from Kuskovo by Count Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev. They joined Pavel Ivanovich Argunov (1768-1806), another Kuskovo hand, and together reworked a design by the architect Francesco Camporesi (1747-1831). Mironov was thought to be Ostankino's principal planner. Other Kuskovo veterans at Ostankino were Petr Alekseevich Biziaev, a son of a Kuskovo bailiff; Fedor Khaldin, a student of Aleksei Mironov at Kuskovo in the mid-1780s and at Ostan- kino in 1797; Aleksandr Kotyrev, who reputedly was also involved at both places; and one V. Okonishnikov, a Sheremetev serf architect about whom nothing is known. Architecture students Gavrila Nikolaev, who worked on the design of Ostankino's main edifice, and Ivan Ponomarev were there at the century's end. Dmitrii Golovtsev was engaged at Ostankino during the first years of the nineteenth century. Finally, Vasilii Grigor'evich Dikushin and Sergei Alekseevich Mironov, both sons of the principal architects, may have as- sisted their fathers there. We know Dikushin as only an architect's assis- tant; Mironov, however, taught architecture under his father at Kazakov's Moscow school and served under his father at the Sheremetev Indigents' Hospital. More elegant than Ostankino was Arkhangel'skoe, particularly in its exterior (Figs. 10, 11, 12, 13). Located west of Moscow toward Mozhaisk, this estate belonged initially to the Golitsyns and then the Iusupovs, who lavished enormous sums on both the palace and gardens. The central corpus, striking for its drum without a cupola, dated from the 1780s, when it replaced one built a half century earlier. This main structure was completed, however, only in the last years of the century and then by serfs. The front facade, which conformed to the popular tripartite scheme for such buildings at this time, was punctuated by a four-column Ionic portico with a pediment. The lateral wings formed the entrance to the courtyard and were linked by colonnades on both sides. The garden facade was dominated by the oval projection of the main hall within the palace and by the unusual drum. Twin Corinthian columns divided the latter into sections, each containing a large round window. Arkhangel'skoe's architects were, with the exception of the French architect Charles de Gerne, all Iusupov serfs. Vasilii Iakovlaevich Striz- hakov (1791[?]-1819), who belonged to N. B. Iusupov, labored on the palace from 1812 until his death. Stepan Petrovich Mel'nikov, who may

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FIGURE 10. Arkhangel'skoe, The Palace from the Front (1780s-1831). Photo, A. J. Schmidt.

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FIGURE 11. Arkhangel'skoe, The Palace from the Rear. Photo, A. J. Schmidt.

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FIGURE 12. Arkhangel'skoe. Plan of the First Floor of the Palace. From Rzianin, Arkhi- tekturnye ansambli Moskvy i podmoskov'ia. not have been a serf, built the entrance gate in 1817. Others there were Andrei Bredikhin, Lev Grigor'evich Rabutovskii, Saveiji Grigor'evich Sumakovskii, and Petr Shestakov. Rabutovskii was one of Strizhakov's students; Sumakovskii, a student of the Moscow architect Evgraf Dmitrie- vich Tiurin (1792-1870), like Rabutovskii, contributed plans to the ensemble. Shestakov worked at Arkhangel'skoe after 1827.23

23 After 1812 a number of prominent Moscow architects -Osip Ivanovich Bove (1784- 1834), Ivan Danilovich Zhukov (b. 1763), Mel'nikov, Tiurin, and Strizhakov-collaborated to rebuild Arkhangel'skoe. Originally, twelve pairs of Tuscan columns set off the main court; entrance gates with an arch and sculptures were built by Mel'nikov and Strizhakov only in 1817 The work of Tiurin and Strizhakov, in particular, gave the palace and park an "Empire" look, characteristic of the first third of the nineteenth century.

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The Moscow region was a spawning ground for many lesser-known estates, which were in every instance exemplars of aristocratic high living and often of architectural accomplishment. Two such properties were at Laropolets, beyond Volokolamsk, northwest of Moscow. One, called laropolets Chernyshev, was built in the late 1760s or early 1770s in rococo style, especially from its park side (Figs. 14, 15). An exquisite Doric pavilion, Kazanskaia Church, and a 1780s burial vault for Field Marshal Count Zakhar G. Chernyshev, possibly by Kazakov, were also on the grounds. The other Jaropolets, which belonged to the Goncharovs, was con- structed in the 1780s and consisted notably of the main corpus, a church, servants' quarters, coach-house, stables, and a pair of massive cylindrical gate towers. The great house was marked by a central six-column Corin- thian portico. Its facade was extended by single-story Corinthian gal-

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FIGURE 14. Iaropolets (Chernyshev), Great House from the Park Side (1760s-1770s). From N. Ia. Tikhomirov, Arkhitektura podmoskovnykh usadev (Moscow, 1955).

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FIGURE 15. Iaropolets (Chernyshev), Plan of First Floor of House. From Tikhomirov, Arkhitektura podmoskovnykh usadev.

This content downloaded from 129.2.19.103 on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:58:59 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 400 ALBERT J. SCHMIDT leries, each terminating in a two-story block and complementing the portico. Nikol'skoe-Gagarino (Figs. 16, 17), which also lay in the direction of Volokolamsk, was undertaken in the mid-1770s by the noted architect Ivan Starov (1744-1808). Its main corpus and wings dramatically encom- passed an entrance court, but the surprise lay in its park profile. This consisted of a cupola, an assortment of windows, and a huge ground level bay protruding from a concave center- all of which created a unique back- drop for stairs descending into the park. Starov completed this composition by adding a cylindrical belltower and church according to the Greek plan. Also northwest of Moscow lay Nikol'skoe-Uriupino, a single story Belyi Domik. Small by eighteenth-century Russian standards, it was defined by a Corinthian front and an Ionic loggia in back. Besides a pilastered central pediment and a pair of lateral Corinthian porticoes, the front was pierced by a half dozen windows. Rosettes on stuccoed walls matched the garden sculptures, some of which were removed to Arkhangel'skoe. Two neighboring estates - Gorenki and Pekhra-Iakovlevskoe - lay northeast of Moscow, toward Vladimir. The first, belonging to the Razu- movskiis, was a 1780s-1790s creation by the Scotsman, Adam Menelaws (1753-1831), architect of the Cottage Palace and its furnishings at Peterhof and the Razumovskii ensemble in Gorokhovskii Alley, Moscow. A massive central corpus with a great six-column portico dominated this Menelaws work. This ensemble included an orangery, coach houses, and guard houses at each of two approaches to the house, and pavilions on each side of a formal garden. A colonnaded park side of the great house became the hallmark of the composition, but this dated from 1916. The Golitsyn princes' Pekhra-Iakovlevskoe, a late eighteenth-/early nineteenth-century ensemble, was shielded from the road by a spacious park and gracefully situated on the high banks of the Pekhra River. Its great house was extended by colonnaded wings and embellished by a back stairway leading down to the river and an adjacent orangery and theater. Stately as these individual estate ornaments were, Pekhra- Iakovlevskoe's gem was the Preobrazhenskaia Church (1777-1782). Like the similarly monumental Troitskoe-Kainardzhi Church of P. A. Rumiantsev- Zadunaiskii nearby, it was probably designed by Bazhenov. North of Moscow, toward Dmitrov, lay two important estates, Sered- nikovo and Ol'govo. Majestic Serednikovo was built for the Vsevolozh- skiis late in Catherine's reign (Fig. 18). A frontal view of the central block revealed a pilastered facade, an exquisite belvedere, and a gallery of columns that created first a porch and then lateral wings. These wings em- braced a fenced court guarded by two Doric towers. Stables, a cattleyard, and a bridge completed this ensemble. Ol'govo was built in a character- istically 1770s mode. Visitors arriving at the ensemble were greeted by an obelisk, a surprisingly subdued 1750s church, and a tower. The court and its formal garden were enclosed by wings separate from the house: the upper portion of the right wing served as a theater; the lower left and

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right, respectively, housed married and unmarried serfs. The stables and cattleyard and still another obelisk lay to the right of the house. A pond in the park behind the house brilliantly reflected both the graceful rear facade with its Ionic portico and a pavilion on the opposite bank. To the south and west of Moscow dozens of great estates were built during Catherine's reign. Cheremushki, designed possibly by Kazakov and belonging first to the Golitsyns and then to the Menshikovs, origi- nated in the late 1780s. Located near the Danilovskie Gates at Moscow's southern approach, this two-story edifice was placed within a formal court and framed by white spruces clipped as pyramids. Its facade was defined by an attic with round windows and a portico of four columns and pediment. Valuevo, the seat of the Musin-Pushkins, was set out some thirty kilo- meters southwest of Moscow on the river Livovka. Its two-story main structure had a six-column Ionic porch, belvedere, a colonnaded gallery and two-story wings (Fig. 19). Offices, stables and a cattleyard of each side, and a formal garden engaged the visitor approaching the main entrance. A further assortment of buildings, including an orangery, and

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FIGURE 20. Petrovskoe-Alabino. Great House (1770s-1780s) from Park Side. Architect, V. I. Bazhenov and/or possibly M. F Kazakov. From Tikhomirov, Arkhitektura podmoskovnykh usadev.

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FIGURE 21. Petrovskoe-Alabino. Plan of First Floor of House. From Tikhomirov, Arkhi- tektura podmoskovnykh usadev.

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FIGURE 22. Petrovskoe-Alabino. Architect's Model of Estate at the Architectural Mu- seum, Donskoi Monastery. Photo, A. J. Schmidt. before this graceful mansion with its soaring Ionic portico divided by a balcony. The north and south wings were modest, their facades dominated by a Doric porch without a pediment. The south wing was extended by a bowed Ionic colonnade. The park alley, separated from the house by a parterre, served as an axis for the estate house. The Razumovskiis' majestic Polivanovo lay on the Serpukhov Road near Podol'sk. Its manor house, possibly designed by Bazhenov, was rather smallish but adorned with a tasteful Ionic portico and balcony. The most intriguing part of the building was its cylindrical corner towers with cupolas. The Polivanovo Church, built in 1777-1779, was probably another Bazhenov creation. Its facade was an imposing four-columned Doric porch with pediment, two conventional rectangular windows on each side of the door, and porthole-type windows over each of these apertures, including the doorway. Volynshchina, west of Moscow on the river Ozerna, was built during the 1770s for the Dolgorukov-Krymskiis. The entrance to the ensemble, surrounded by a park, was a tree-lined alley terminated by obelisks. The two-story manor house, likely Bazhenov's, had a four-column Ionic portico. The curvature of its lateral wings allowed the central block to con- form to the shape of the circular court (Fig. 23). A few country estates were an exception to the usual classical mode. Although a vibrant Gothic Revival did not take root in Russia as it did in Western Europe, a peculiar Russian variation-once called by Soviet scholars "pseudo-Gothic" or "romantic-national"-was occasionally used.

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24 This romanticized style was used for diverse buildings other than great houses. Ba- zhenov applied it to a number of churches on estates in the Moscow region. One was the Nikol'skaia on the Cherkasskovo estate in Cherkizovo-Starki near Kolomna. Erected in the

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FIGURE 24. Tsaritsyno. Ensemble (1775-1785). Architect, V. V. Bazhenov. Photo, A. J. Schmidt.

CONSUMPTrION IN GILT AND GLASS: GREAT HOUSE INTERIORS

just as the exteriors of these mansions reflected an elegance imitative of European taste, the great house interiors to an even greater extent epitomized the Russian nobility's affluence and craze to consume.25 In many respects the obsession with fine furniture was but a dimension of their building mania: architects, like Charles Cameron for the Catherine Palace, were called upon to design entire interiors; others, like the great serf architect Andrei Nikiforovich Voronikhin (1759-1814), did furnishings. Many objects, as noted, were imported: Catherine II's favorite Grigorii Orlov received a silver service of some eight hundred pieces, executed by the Parisian silversmith Roettiers in 1770-1771. Another eight-

seventeenth century, this church was rebuilt according to plan by Bazhenov in 1759. He designed another for the estate of Iur'ev in 1763 and a third for that of Bykovo, just south and east of Moscow, in the 1780s. Tikhomirov, Arkhitektura podmoskovnykh usadeb, 216-26, discusses these churches in some detail. Other National-Romantic churches included those in the villages of Ivanteevka (1808, by Aleksei Nikitich Bakarev (1762-1817]) and Nikol'skaia- Tsarevo (1812-1815, possibly by Egotov). Not all of Bazhenov's estate churches were in this style: in the village of Vinogradov it was probably he who built the classical (and triangular) Vladimirskaia Church in 1779. 25 See Laura Cerwinske, Russian Imperial Style (New York, 1990); Cheneviere, Russian Furniture; K. A. Solov'ev, Russkii khudozhestvennyi parket (Moscow, 1953); and L. Cherikover, Bytovaia mebel' russkogo klassitsizma kontsa XVIII-nachala XIV UV. (Moscow, 1954); Paul Schaffer, "A Survey of Trends in the Russian Decorative Arts in the First half of the Nine- teenth Century," in Art and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou (Bloomington, Indiana, 1983), 211-220.

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hundred-piece service-this one of porcelain and decorated with cameos-was produced for Catherine by the Svres establishment in 1778. Silk hangings for the empress's apartments were acquired from Lyons, and so it went.26 Westerners, in turn, perceived Russia as an untapped market for con- sumables. Josiah Wedgwood, the English pottery maker and venture capitalist, worried in 1772 that the Russians might not be ready for his wares:

The Russians must have Etruscan, & Grecian vases about the 19th Century. I fear they will not be ripe for them much sooner, unless our good friend Sr. Wm. Hamilton should go Ambassador thither & prepare a hot bed to bring these Northern plants to Maturity before their natural time.27

Despite this lure of the Russian market, English middlemen were dis- dainful of Russian taste. Matthew Boulton observed that it was "not nec- essary to attend to elegance in such articles of my manufacture as are des- tind for Siberia and America . . . but rather to the bad taste of those countrys and to adapt my self to every Clime." Nonetheless, he pondered making his pottery "as bright a Straw colour as possible: This would be just the thing the Russians and some of the Germans want, and perhaps not a disagreeable change and distinction for our own Nobility and Gentry."28 Four years later, however, Wedgwood noted that Boulton and

26 Cheneviere, Russian Furniture, 21. Catherine II's famous "Green Frog" table and des- sert service, which had 1,244 British views on 952 pieces, was still another example of such extravagance. For more on this and the Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich's Chamberlain- Worcester breakfast and tea service, see Peter Hayden, "British Seats on Imperial Russian Tables," Garden History, 13.1 (Autumn 1985), 16-32. Aside from illustrating English influ- ence in Russian culture and taste, the "Frog" service is an important source of architectural and garden history. 27 Neil McKendrick, "Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth-Century Entrepreneur in Sales- manship and Marketing Techniques," The Economic History Review, 12, 2nd ser. (1960), 426. McKendrick further observed that by appealing to the fashionable cry for antiquities, by pandering to their [the Russians'] requirements, by asking their advice and accepting their smallest orders, by flattery and attention, Wedgwood hoped to monopolize the aristocratic market, and thus win for his wares a special distinction, a social cachet which would filter through to all classes of society (p. 414). The Russian market was also tested by James Meader and Johann Busch (John Bush), two gardeners recruited by Catherine II. They formed a partnership to import luxury items-from prints and engravings of landscapes and ships to pineapple plants and Caro- lina ducks:

New good prints which are finely engraved sell here at an enormous price. I wish I had some sent. They cannot come to a better market for they are purchased with avidity.... Good landscapes will please. I wish you would chuse me some fine impressions and if you see any others should be glad of them. Quoted in E. H. M. Cox, "An English Gardener at the Russian Court, 1779-87," Nezv Flora and Silva, 2.2 (1939), 105. 28 Eric Robinson, "Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood, Apostles of Fashion;' R.P.T. Davenport-Hines and Jonathan Liebenau, eds., Business in the Age of Reason (London, 1987), 101-02. See also Robinson, "Eighteenth-Century Commerce and Fashion: Matthew Boulton's Marketing Techniques," Past and Present, 16 (1963-1964), 39-60; Cross, "By the Banks of the Thames", 209-10 and 198-208; and Peter Hayden, "Russian Patrons of English Pottery," Britain-USSR, 72 (Dec. 1985), 6-7 The Russian appetite for fine porcelain was also satisfied by the home market. Hard paste figurines from the St. Petersburg Imperial Porcelain Manufactory and the Verbilki Gardner Factories offered creations reminiscent of Meissen ware. See N. Chernyi, Farfor

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John Fothergill, a goldsmith and Boulton's associate, "hoped to supplant the French, as well in the Plate as in the Gilt business, both of which are very considerable.729 Late eighteenth-century Russian furniture production was undertaken by such diverse groups as guilds of cabinetmakers, shipyard car- penters, joiners/turners, serfs, and foreign craftsmen lured by the prospects of good earnings. Serfs frequently displayed an expertise in furniture construction consistent with that displayed in architecture. Working as they did in the estate carpentry shop, they moved easily from fashioning utilitarian items to imitations of Dutch chairs and German wardrobes. Despite derivative styles, these Russian craftsmen became highly proficient. When they embellished their creations with marquetry, carvings, and gilt they transformed their craft into art.30 Just as foreign architects had obtained lucrative commissions in eighteenth-century Russia, so did interior designers and furniture makers come seeking Russian customers for their talent and wares. The Scottish architect Charles Cameron crafted flawless interiors for the empress's apartments at Tsarskoe Selo and the palace at Pavlovsk. David Roentgen, called the greatest of German furniture makers, was certainly the most successful of those who exploited the eighteenth-century market whether in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or St. Petersburg. Arriving in Russia in 1783, he engineered immense sales of his sumptuous furniture to moneyed Russians. For one piece alone-a mahogany desk with ve- neer and gilt bronze-he received 20,000 rubles.31 Georges Jacob, pro- vider to the French court of Louis XVI, and the German masters Christian

Verbilok (Moscow, 1970). "Peoples of Russia"- which include an "Oriental Man and Women," and Kirghiz, Samoyed, Yakut, Shaman, Woman from Ingria, Karbadian, Tartar, and Lapp- lander, and a set of Muscovite peddlers-were produced at the Imperial Manufactory and are presently displayed in the Jack and Belle Linsky Galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Porcelain figures from the Gardner works are also displayed in the Hillwood Museum in Washington, D.C. For more on porcelain see Baranova, Kuskovo and Marvin C. Ross, Russian Porcelains (Norman, OK, 1965), which is a catalog of the Post Collection in the Hillwood Museum. A La Vieille Russie, a commercial establishment at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street in Manhattan, exhibited (March-April 1991) "An Imperial Fascination: Porcelain (Dining with the Czars)," some six hundred porcelains on loan from the Soviet State Museum-Reserve of Petrodvorets (Peterhof). See Rita Reif, "How Catherine the Great's Dinner was Served," New York Times (24 March 1991). 29 Cheneviere, Russian Furniture, 21. A different twist to this tale is that Fothergill in- formed Wedgwood in 1776 that he and Boulton "having paid the Empress many compli- ments, both in Sculpture and Painting," hoped to supplant the French in the trade in gilt (Robinson, "Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood," 102). 30 Cheneviere depicted a cylinder-top desk with marquetry by Matvei Iakovlevich Veretennikov, a serf belonging to Count Alexander Vasilievich Soltykov, c. 1790 and a torchere of carved, painted and gilded wood by Fedor Nikiforov, who belonged to Princess Shcherbatova and who was attached to an atelier that produced much of the furniture for Sheremetev's Ostankino. Ivan Mochalin and Nikifor Vasiliev, Sheremetev serfs, crafted furniture for Ostankino and Kuskovo respectively (Russian Furniture, 32-33). 31 That one of Count Sheremetev's serfs bought a property with 429 male souls on it for 29,560 rubles in 1777 speaks volumes for both currency and human values for this period. See Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the ninth to the nineteenth century (Princeton, NJ, 1961), 361.

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Meyer and Heinrich Gambs, either individually or through their work- shops, also produced fine furniture for affluent Russians.32 The great houses burgeoned with furnishings of marquetry-painted, gilded, and carved. Painted furniture was usually a light color with deeply hued borders. Cheneviere describes "the white and blue furniture in the library of Kuskovo" and Kuskovo chairs which "have green, red, and yellow borders on a white ground." He also speaks approvingly of the "rich, warm decoration of Ostankino Palace . . . where bottle green, raspberry red and brilliant turquoise vie with burnt umber in an imitation tortoise shell pattern."33 Russian masters excelled in gilding-not just in solid yellow gold but with trims of red and green gold and silver (Figs. 25, 26). The great White Room of Kuskovo, luxuriating with rococo gilding, mirrors, and fine fabrics, was dwarfed by the great halls at Oranienbaum and Tsarskoe Selo; but it competed with them in its gleaming particulars. Carved and painted furniture - chairs, torcheres, perfume burners, candelabra, and firescreens-were produced by both serf and free craftsmen in the Moscow workshop of Pavel Spol for Ostankino Pal- ace.34 Some carved furniture-for example, an elegant armchair in the Kuskovo Palace and a console table, a candle stand, and two perfume- burners at Ostankino-were both painted and gilded. One torchere of carved, gilded and painted wood from the Spol workshop for the Egyp- tian Hall cost an incredible 1,150 rubles.35 That Kazakov's Demidov House in Moscow was untouched by the fire in 1812 explains its minimal exterior alteration and completely preserved Catherinian interior. Its Golden Rooms set it apart from all other resi- dences of late eighteenth-century Moscow. Richly adorned throughout- as shown by its lower vestibule, circular dining room on the upper floor, and living and bedrooms-the mansion possessed a decor original in its ornament and trim. The living and bedrooms glistened with wreaths, flowered cornices, gold-leaf carvings over the windows and doors, dainty vases, and enchanting colors. Demidov's interior, like the Hall of Columns in Moscow, confirmed Kazakov as Catherinian Russia's premier interior designer. Ostankino also epitomized the sumptuousness of the age. There the Sheremetev love of theater led them to build one, this time a huge one with a spacious stage. A ballroom and reception halls-the Italian and Egyptian Pavilions in each of two lateral wings-were also added. Even- tually these two pavilions were replaced by more reception rooms. Their trim, consisting of relief sculpture, coffered and painted ceilings, col-

32 See Cheneviere, Russian Furniture, 73-78 and 79-144. Furniture credited to David Roentgen is displayed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York; pieces by Georges Jacob are at the Getty Museum in Malibu, California. The best American repositories of Russian furniture for this period are A La Vieille Russie and the Hillwood Museum. 33 Ibid., 36. 34 Some of these were Grigorii Chukhnov, Vasilii Kondarev, and Egor Chetvirikov. Ibid., 59-63. 35 Ibid., 51-60.

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FIGURE 25. Kuskovo. Interior of the Main Hall of the Palace. From Rzianin, Arkhitek- turnye ansambli Moskvy ipodmoskov'ia

FIGURE 26. Kuskovo. Suite of Rooms off the Palace Hall. From Rzianin, Arkhitekturnye ansambli Moskvy i podmoskov"ia.

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umns, pilasters, massive doorways guarded by giants and sphinxes, and exquisite fireplaces, was both designed and crafted by serfs and often of materials imitative of bronze and marble. Art and craftsmanship especially coalesced in magnificent parquet floors designed by serfs from rose- wood, black oak, elm, and birch. Like Kuskovo, Ostankino was lavishly furnished. The serf Fedor Nikiforov's and the Petersburg master Iakov Dunaiev's gilded carved marble and malachite mosaic console tables in the picture gallery particularly advertised Ostankino's interior as a model for great houses in the region.36 Kuskovo, Demidov House, and Ostankino were not exceptions in ex- travagant interior decor. The Gold Hall of Belyi Domik at Nikol'skoe- Uriupino exuded sculptures, pilasters, and decorative doorways while the walls in other rooms were painted with various classical motifs. Paint- ings from Greek mythology and sculpturesque relief by the artist De- mentii Karlovich Scotti (1780-1825) adorned the walls and ceiling of Liublino, built by the architect Ivan Vasil'evich Egotov (1756-1814) in 1801. He further embellished its interior with artificial marble and stucco medallions and exquisite parquet floors. The great house at Znamenskoe (or Sadki, as it was called) also had painted ceilings -Apollo careening through the clouds in a chariot-and distinctive Karelian birch furniture crafted by serf masters. The Moscow aristocracy spent lavishly on their assembly halls as on their palaces. Kazakov's Hall of Columns in the Nobles' Meeting House, admired by the German naturalist and Russophile Peter Simon Pallas, epitomized this extravagance.37 By creating daring combinations of cupolas, columns, pilasters, cornices, relief sculptures, and paintings the architect surpassed even his Golden Rooms in Demidov house in Gorokhovskii Alley. A glistening Corinthian colonnade enveloped the room and supported a small attic with a balustrade; above a protruding frieze semicircular windows filtered light through the columns. Mirrors, similarly shaped, created illusions of spaciousness, further magnifying the brilliance of crystal chandeliers hanging between each pair of columns. The hall's painted ceiling, a Kazakov masterpiece, was destroyed in 1812. This great room became a prototype for palatial ballrooms in provincial Russia-in Kostroma, Tula, and Kaluga.

RUSSIAN PARKS: A LANDSCAPE VISUALLY CONSUMED38

A magnificent manor house with a sumptuous interior and furnishings was invariably designed for a very particular site. Its "natural" park setting, as if inspired by a Poussin or Lorrain landscape, was a counter-

36 Ibid., 42-47. 37 Schmidt, Classical Moscow, 75. Pallas contributed to Russia's landscape aesthetic by introducing various species of trees into Russian parks and gardens. 38 See A. G. Cross, "Catherine the Great and the English Garden," paper presented at IV World Slavic Congress, Harrogate, England, summer 1990, and "The English Garden and Russia: An Anonymous Identified," Study Group on Eighteenth-Century Russia Newsletter

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poise to regulated flower beds and an orangery nearer the house. Ponds and lakes were placed to mirror this beauty and, not incidentally, were utilized for fish farming and fowling as well.39 A natural, woodsy setting required planting deciduous ash, linden, and maples, and various conifers. Those responsible for creating such pleasure grounds in Russia aped English models-for the most part Stowe in Buckinghamshire, Kew in Surrey, and to a lesser extent Stourhead in Wiltshire-all of which de- lighted walkers and riders alike. The viewer was treated to a sequence of prospects of serene Grecian temples, pagodas, obelisks, seats, artificial lakes, and picturesque bridges - all situated beneath beech- and fir-planted slopes.40 Tsarskoe Selo and Pavlovsk reminded the Moscow nobility of what they could accomplish by way of planting parks on their own estates.41 After the owner selected a site for his estate, all tasks-those of sur- veying and designing the house, outbuildings, and park-were the architect's, whether he was a Bazhenov, Kazakov, or an anonymous serf. The Moscow regional topography was not particularly dramatic-small and lazy rivers and swampy embankments had to substitute for swift cur- rents, rapids, waterfalls; and forests for peaks, bluffs, and rocks. While white birches relieved the monotony of willows and alders, oak, aspen, and maple scattered among the fir and pine produced an autumnal

2 (Sept. 1974), 25-29; Peter Hayden, "A Celebration of Water," Landscape Design, 162 (Aug. 1986), 19-23; "A Note on Jacques Delille," Garden History, 18.2 (Autumn 1990), 195-97; "British Seats on Imperial Russian Tables," cited above; "Imperial Culture at Pavlovsk," Country Life (11 June 1987), 118-19; and "Pavlovsk," The Garden (June 1982); M. A. Il'in, "Arkhitektura russkoi usad'by," Igor Grabar', ed., Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, 6 (Moscow, 1961), 296-315; Iljin [Il'in], "Russian Parks of the Eighteenth Century," The Architectural Re- view, 135.804 (1964), 101-11; Dmitrii S. Likhachev, Poeziia sadov (Leningrad, 1982); Priscilla R. Roosevelt, "Tatiana's Garden: Noble Sensibilities and Estate Park Design in the Romantic Era," Slavic Review 49.3 (Fall 1990), 335-49; E. P. Shchukina, "Natural'nyi sad russkoi usad'by v kontse XVIII v.;" Russkoe iskusstvo XVIII veka, T. V. Alekseeva, ed. (Moscow, 1973), 109-17; N. Ia. Tikhomirov, Arkhitektura podmoskovnykh usadeb, 69-94; and Vergunov and Gorokhov, Russkie sady i parki. I am particularly indebted to my mentor, the late Professor Il'in of Moscow University, for this section of my paper. 39 Il'in's comparative treatment of Russian and foreign parks is vintage Soviet. He re- gards Russian parks as having been superior to all others: the French he dismisses as labor intensive and unproductive; the English did not, like the Russian, have an abundance of fruit trees ("Russian Parks," 102). He particularly extolled the accomplishments of the Rus- sian horticulturist Andrei Bolotov (1738-1833) and the architect Nikolai L'vov (pp. 102 ff.). 40 Of these Stowe was the most popular with foreign visitors. See Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House (New Haven, 1978), 210. Peter Hayden observed that Stowe was the first landscaped park to have its own guidebook and that on Catherine II's Wedg- wood "Frog" service there were forty-eight Stowe views, twenty-seven of Kew, and seven of Stourhead (letter to author, 28 December 1990). 41 For more about the transmission of English gardening ideas, see Cox, "An English Gardener at the Russian Court, 103-12. Cross, "Catherine the Great and the English Garden" discusses Catherine's enchantment with English gardens and her recruitment of English and Scots gardeners. She once wrote to Voltaire (1772): "I love English gardens to distraction at the moment . .. in fact I should say that Anglomania rules my Plantomania" (as quoted from Cheneviere, Russian Furniture, 22). Sharing her countrymen's appetite for prints, she purchased "views" of Stowe, Kew, Painshill, Chatsworth, and Chiswick, Mount Edgcumbe and Claremont-the very same as on her Frog service (p. 8).

This content downloaded from 129.2.19.103 on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:58:59 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 414 ALBERT J. SCHMIDT brilliance absent from the mere hazel, buckthorn, and alder. This envi- ronment of rivers and streams, ravines, meadows, and forests challenged the architect to the fullest as he laid out the park and designed the edifice.42 The landscape architect placed trees in accord with the siting of the house. He chose deciduous and conifers for their colors and shapes, de- termined whether they should be planted in clusters, in rows alongside the great house, or in an avenue of birches, as planted by Voronikhin on the approach to Brattsevo, just north of Moscow. Just as new trees were introduced into the outer reaches of the park, new flora - flowering lilac, spiraea, and honeysuckle - brightened gardens nearest the great house. In laying out these parks and gardens the architect carefully weighed the visual consequence of the placement of each tree, bush, or flower bed. Autumnal colors of the oak and maple, the silhouette created or shadows cast by conifers and deciduous alike, their disposition on a snowy landscape or in a glade in the spring, the colors of the flowers in their bed and in the fields, and the consequence of the woods adjacent to the park- all such matters figured into the calculations of horticulturists who undertook to improve upon nature's landscape. That these landscape professionals were in great demand is a further in- dication of the nobility's passion to consume.43 The architect also had to decide the best means of bringing water into this composition-whether left running naturally as rivers and brooks or transformed into artificial fountains, cascades, ponds, and lakes. Ma- jestic Vvedenskoe, undertaken by Nikolai Aleksandrovich L'vov (1751- 1803) for the Lopukhins near Zvenigorod, exemplified an otherwise idyllic setting intensified by fountains, cascades, and a reflecting pool gar- nished with sculptures (Fig. 27). laropolets Goncharov's park and river were matched by nearby laropolets Chernyshev, which was backed by formal gardens and a reflecting pool as well as a park and river. The great houses at Ol'govo, Petrovskoe (Durnevo), and Marfino, north of Moscow, were each mirrored by a pool. The park at Valuevo had a formal court in front, while the park in the rear sloped gently to the river. The mansion at Dubrovitsy, near Podol'sk southwest of Moscow, also backed on a river, the Desna. Nearby Ostaf'evo's house was perpendicular to a large

42 Il'in, "Russian Parks," 103. 43 Ibid., 109-10. Works on horticulture, like those by Pallas, were eagerly read by Rus- sians. Cf. Cox, "An English Gardener," 105-06, 109, who quotes the English gardener James Meader that The nobles who have been in England are so much enraptured with the English pleasure gardens that they are cried up here. This has set them all gardening mad. Any of the nobility will give ?100 pr Ann for an English gardener. I have been applied to for more than one but we few who are already here are not desirous of seeing any more arrive lest one scabby sheep spoil the whole flock. Il'in notes that experimentation with the acclimatization of southern plants was undertaken at Count Razumovskii's Gorenki and at Arkhangel'skoe. In fact, central Russian landscape gardening won such high recognition that some features of it were adopted at Pavlovsk.

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FIGURE 27. Nikolai Aleksandrovich L'vov (1751 or 1759-1803). From M. V. Budylina, et al., Arkhitektor N. A. L'vov (Moscow, 1961). pond; Bazhenov placed the summer house at Bykovo, just south of Moscow, on an island in a lake. Most great estates, including L'vov's own at Nikol'skoe in the Tver' region, incorporated regulated gardens in the larger park design. In such circumstances the cour d'honneur, parterre, and perhaps oval or oblong flower beds inevitably were planted near the house. Some gardens, like Arkhangel'skoe's, were quite large; there a threefold-parterre with sculptures ran down to the Moskva River. Placing the entrance gates, the main court, the palace, and the parterre on a longitudinal axis created a sym- metrical Arkhangel'skoe ensemble. Like Ostankino, Arkhangel'skoe of-

This content downloaded from 129.2.19.103 on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:58:59 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 416 ALBERT J. SCHMIDT fered diversity-that of a regulated park bordered by a river, an orangery, and natural landscape. In Ostankino park, largely the work of Mironov, a severely regulated garden was set out adjacent to the main edifice, where an alley formed an axis between the palace facade and a large pond. As at Kuskovo, stat- uary bedecked the parterre; beyond this French garden, however, an English landscape prevailed. At Gorenki a stairway with eagle sculptures on each side led from the main house to a geometric garden. Iaropolets Chernyshev was backed by one with water accoutrements; Nikol'skoe- Uriupino's regulated garden was made to complement an Ionic loggia. Viazemy, west of Moscow, and Voronovo, south of the city, were further exemplars of this formal garden art. Every celebrated estate-whether on its terraces or staircases, in the garden, or at separate locations in the great park- abounded with sculptures. These varied from marble replicas of wild beasts to an assortment of classical deities and muses, vases, and obelisks. River landings and gateways were an especial refuge for lions and griffins as with the winged lions on the Marfino pier, those beside the cast-iron gates at Kuzminki, and the lions and griffins of Dementii Ivanovich Giliardi (1788-1845) at the rear entrance to Naidenovy in Moscow. At Arkhangel'skoe the garden terraces were graced with marble statues of "Caprice," "Glade View," "Gate Ruins," 'Apollo's Grove," a statue of Catherine II, and many others - all in emulation of the imperial palaces at Tsarskoe Selo and Pavlovsk. The Demidovs, who prospered from Ural iron, found it an irre- sistible medium for their park sculpture; so did the Arakcheevs at Gruzino. Ornamental gates such as those at Kuzminki and Iaropolets Chernyshev similarly conveyed magnificence in iron (Fig. 28). Obelisks, fairly commonplace among estate monuments, embellished Iaropolets Chernyshev, the formal court at Volynshchina, and Ol'govo Park, before a setting of pavilions and summer villas. Outbuildings, complementing the great houses, often served the dual purposes of aesthetics and pleasure. The utility of servants' quarters, stables, and barns contrasted with the whimsy of baroque "Dutch Houses," such as the one at Voronovo, and hermitages, a staple of Rus- sian parks. "Palladian" villas, imitating the great house, joined bridges, pavilions, and grottoes as standard park accessories. Summer houses and small bath houses, designed by scarcely-known locals as well as by eminent architects, became especially voguish by the end of the century. Among the ornaments in Arkhangel'skoe park were an orangery, a ruin, a Roman gate on the east side of the park, a pavilion "Caprice," a tea house, and a theater. Summer houses ranged from Tsaritsyno's "Golden Sheaf" and Marfino's "Temple of Ceres" to Bazhenov's Corin- thian version at Bykovo islet, replete with columns, pilasters, and cupola. With it he created a winsome two-story pavilion- cylindrical with wings and cupola-which he divided into Ionic pilastered segments embellished with sculptures. Situated to reflect in a lake, Bazhenov's pavilion had a pier with a stairway surmounted by urns and sculptures.

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7-7

FIGURE 28. Kuz'minki. Plan of Estate. From Rzianin, Arkhitekturnye ansambli Moskvy i podmoskoVzia.

A Bazhenov was not required for such creations: Neskuchnoe had such buildings, designed by locals, at the beginning of the new century. The same was true with Sukhanovo, which had an 1820s bridge, a Gothic servants' quarters, and a classical eight-column "Temple of Venus" summer house, replete with frieze and cupola (Fig. 29). Marfino's Ionic summer abode was similar to Sukhanovo's but without a frieze. Mausoleums and churches were standard estate fixtures and not infre- quently designed by Russia's greatest architects. L'vov planned his own mausoleum at Nikol'skoe; the one at Sukhanovo, dating from 1813, was either by Dementii Giliardi or by Afanasii Grigor'evich Grigor'ev (1782-1868). Bazhenov authored numerous churches, among which may have been the Preobrazhenskaia at Pekhra-Iakovlevskoe and most certainly the Vladimirskaias at Bykovo (1789) and Vinogradovo (1777); ad- ditionally, he designed the belltower of Cherkizovo-Starki and directed reconstruction of the Nikol'skaia Church there in the early 1760s. Kazakov designed the one at Rai-Semenovskoe (1765-1783), Egotov the Nikol'skaia at Nikol'skoe-Tsarevo (1812-1815), and probably Voronikhin the Nikol'- skaia at Grebnevo (1817-1823). The Nikol'skaia at Nikol'skoe-Gargarino, its belltower, and its iconostasis were conceived by Starov. The church at Nikol'skoe-Prozorovskoe dated from the 1770s and Volynshchina's from 1782. Some estate churches such as the seventeenth-century ones at Nikol'skoe-Uriupino and Ostankino, the baroque ones at Marfino and Dubrovitsy, and the early classical Michael the Archangel at Ostaf'evo antedated their respective estate houses.

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Moscow, also deplored the condition of the countryside: "The villages near Moscow . .. are deserted and sad. The horns do not sound in the groves of Sviblovo and Ostankino; Chinese lanterns do not light up English walks, now overgrown with grass, and once planted about with myrtle and orange. . .. the manor house (barskii dom) disintegrates."44 While we should exercise caution in reacting to Pushkin's laments-for estate house construction continued as did other instances of conspic- uous consumption -the Russian nobility's best years clearly were behind them.

44 Quoted in Wl'in, "Russian Parks," 111. In this same article barskii dom is incorrectly translated as "Barskii's house."

This content downloaded from 129.2.19.103 on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:58:59 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ESTATE BUILDING IN THE MOSCOW REGION 419

The Moscow grandees' feverish building during the late eighteenth century suggests several lessons about consumption. One is that of the role played by images. The badge of aristocratic living-of consumption imitative of the West-became the classical facade, the geometric garden, and the idyllic park. Just as the English nobility built splendid country houses and French aristocrats like the Soubise acquired equally magnificent ones in Paris, the very affluent in Russia indulged their building appetites and in so doing allowed images to advertise their having joined Western European society and culture. While one may marvel at Russian classicism's aesthetic legacy gener- ated, or at least epitomized, by Moscow estate art, one cannot ignore a second theme -that of revenues derived in large measure from a serf culture and lavished, even squandered, on these estates. Similarly, mis- spent funds tragically created a cultural and social chasm that forever separated a Europeanized nobility, increasingly parasitic, from the mass of Russians beholden to a traditional culture. The classical facade advertised that phenomenon graphically. This negative lesson of Westerniza- tion is one that Post-Soviet big spenders would do well to heed.

This content downloaded from 129.2.19.103 on Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:58:59 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms