© Russkiy Mir Foundation. 28 December, 2012

Tsarskoye Selo commemorates the forthcoming 400th anniversary of the House of Romanov, which is to be celebrated next year, with a new project observing the birth dates of the former crowned masters and mistresses of the imperial residence.

The project starts out as the 303rd anniversary of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna is approaching on December 29th (18th Old Style). The event is marked with an eighteenth-century styled floral composition set out in the Third Antechamber of the Catherine Palace.

The composition consists of plants that grew in the Tsarskoye Selo greenhouses in the mid-eighteenth century: tuberose, pelargonium, narcissus, lily, rose, carnation, wild orange, lemon, plum, moluccella and laurel. In accordance with eighteenth-century taste, the bouquet is also decorated with fruits.

Next to it stands an easel holding the portrait of Empress Elizabeth by the Italian painter Pietro Antonio Rotari, depicting the daughter of Peter the Great as the first beauty of her time. Her reign is called the Golden Age of Tsarskoye Selo.

© Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve. 27 December, 2012

The Crimean Tatar Squadron officers of Life Guards Cossack Regiment (left) by Carl Friedrich Schulz (1796-1866), donated to the Museum by the Moscow collectors Sergei and Tatiana Podstanitsky on 25th December 2012, is one of the over forty battle pieces which Emperor Nicholas I commissioned from the German artist for Tsarskoye Selo.

The oil on canvas painting of 1850 is Schulz’s eighteenth (of the 40) work in the Museum by now. It first hung in Nicholas I’s study at the Alexander Palace and then moved to the Dressing Room of Grand Duke Alelxander Nikolayevich (later Emperor Alexander II) at the Catherine Palace, where it can be seen depicted in a 19th-century watercolour by Eduard Hau.

Registered in the palace inventory of 1938–40, the painting was soon looted by the Nazis together with other non-evacuated artworks. In 2006 it was included into Russia’s Summary Catalogue of the Cultural Valuables Stolen and Lost During World War II, published by the Ministry of Culture’s project Cultural Values - Victims of War.

The collectors purchased the painting at a German auction in 2008 from the owners who knew nothing of its real provenance. It is the third piece Sergei and Tatiana Podstanitsky bring back to the Tsarskoye Selo collection. Thanks to them, Ludwig Elsholtz's Prussian Hussars (1840) and Wilhelm Alexander Meyerheim’s Prussian Cuirassiers (1830s-1840s) returned to the Museum in 2011. The paintings, which are to be reinstalled in the Catherine Palace after the restoration of Alexander I’s rooms, will be on display at Moscow’s State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia in 2013.

© Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve. 26 December, 2012

© Paul Gilbert @ Royal Russia

A rare snowfall blankets the Livadia Palace in the Crimea. The Russian Imperial family along with members of Russia's aristocratic and noble families favoured the region for its Mediterranean climate and stunning natural beauty. It was here that they built beautiful palaces and elegant mansions overlooking the Black Sea. When the Revolution swept across Russia, it was the isolation of the region that allowed many of them to escape the advancing Red Terror into exile.

© Paul Gilbert @ Royal Russia. 24 December, 2012

H.I.H. Grand Duke Georgii pays his respects at the coffin of King Zog I of Albania at Tirana on November 17th, 2012 

H.I.H. the Heir, Tsesarevich, and Grand Duke Georgii of Russia, at the behest of his most august mother, the Head of the Russian Imperial House, H.I.H. Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, who was at that time on an official visit to Russia, attended the reburial of the remains of King Zog I of Albania in the capital city of Tirana. The King had been previously been buried in Paris. His Imperial Highness was accompanied by Cyrille Boulay, an advisor on international relations to the Head of Russian Imperial House.

The coffin bearing King Zog I’s body was placed in the Presidential Palace, where official, ambassadors, foreign guests, and ordinary citizens of Albania were afforded the opportunity to pay their last respects. Around noon, a procession on foot accompanying the King’s coffin set out from the Presidential Palace to the Royal Mausoleum, led by the grandson of the late King—the present Head of the Royal House of Albania, Prince Leka II, his fiancée Elia Zaharia, and several other members of the Albanian Royal Family. Among those in the procession were the Head of the Montenegrin Royal House, H.R.H. Prince Nicholas; H.I.H., the Heir, Tsesarevich, and Grand Duke Georgii of Russia; the son-in-law of the King Michael of Romania, H.R.H. Prince Radu; and numerous foreign diplomats. The President of Albania, Bujar Nishani, and the President of Kosovo, Atifete Jahjaga, both spoke at the royal burial site. Afterward there was a memorial meal; and that evening, there was a formal reception in the Presidential Palace in memory of King Zog I.

King Zog I (1895-1961) ruled Albania from 1928. He had numerous accomplishments in the domestic and foreign policy of the young nation, but in 1939 was forced to flee his country because of the invasion of the Italian fascists. After the Second World War, a totalitarian, atheistic communist regime was established in Albania under Enver Hoxha, and in 1967 Albania was declared the “first fully atheistic country” in the world.

King Zog I died in Paris and was buried there. He was succeeded as King (in exile) by Leka I (1939-2011), his son from his marriage with Queen Geraldine (born the Hungarian Countess Géraldine Apponyi de Nagyappony). In 1976, King Leka I attended the marriage in Madrid of the parents of H.I.H. the Heir, Tsesarevich, and Grand Duke Georgii of Russia—H.I.H. Grand Duchess Maria of Russia and H.I.H. Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich (Prince Franz Wilhelm of Prussia). The present Head of the Royal House of Albania is the son of King Leka I and his wife, Queen Susan, H.R.H. Prince Leka II (born in 1982).

© Russian Imperial House. 23 December, 2012

A new documentary by Russian film maker Boris Liznov recalls the costume ball held in the Winter Palace in February 1903. The film is based on old photographs of members of the Imperial family and the Russian Court who attended the event in which guests dressed in luxurious costumes dating from the 17th-century court of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. It was to be the last grand ball before the fall of the monarchy in Russia in 1917.

Liznov has assembled more than 250 vintage images from various museums, and expertly assembled old photos of interiors of the Winter Palace as a backdrop. Narration of the ball is described in detail from the memoirs and letters of those who attended the historic ball.

Liznov further explores the reign of Nicholas II and the end of the dynasty that ruled Russia for more than 300 years. The film has already received 7 awards including Best Director and Best Cinematography. 

||| 1903 Costume Ball in the Winter Palace - Click Here for More Information |||

© Paul Gilbert @ Royal Russia. 22 December, 2012

A monument to the Tsesarevich and Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich (1843-1865) has been unveiled in Nice, France.

The ceremony coincided with the 100th anniversary of Saint Nicholas Cathedral, consecrated in 1912 in memory of Emperor Alexander II's son who died at Nice on 24th April, 1865.

The monument was installed next to the cathedral, and consecrated by Metropolitan of Ryazan. The church choir sang hymns proclaiming the eternal memory of the Tsearevich Nicholas Alexandrovich.

The city of Nice has long honoured Nicholas Alexandrovich's memory: three years after his death, the Villa Bermond (where he died) was demolished to make way for a memorial chapel, and the adjacent street was renamed Boulevard Tsarevich. In 1896, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and her son, Emperor Nicholas II organized the construction of a new cathedral, which was completed in 1912. The construction of the cathedral was financed from the private purse of the last tsar. To date, Saint Nicholas Cathedral is the largest Russian Orthodox church in Europe. 

© Paul Gilbert @ Royal Russia. 22 December, 2012

Khvalevskoye, former estate of Nikolai Kachalov 

The Russian culture minister Vladimir Medinsky has begun a campaign to auction pre-revolutionary estates and mansions to save them from potential ruin. He said that architectural monuments in the worst condition would be a priority and would be offered for long-term rent or even sale to those who can demonstrate that they are committed to restoration.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia rejected the idea of property restitution to descendants of the noble families and wealthy merchants who owned such homes before the Bolshevik Revolution.

Medinsky said that the government had failed to follow through on previous plans to manage the properties and that the situation had reached a crisis point.

“There are 150,000 [architectural] monuments in the country,” said the minister according to the RIA Novosti state news agency. “Some of them are in private hands, a majority are in state hands and even more are in a state of ruin. About ten years ago there were instructions to hand over about 2,500 monuments to the monuments administration agency. [But] the government’s instruction was not carried out. Two hundred and forty-one monuments were handed over. The monuments are in [a] horrific condition.”

Medinsky said that the ministry had already proposed that Rosimushchestvo, the state property agency, auction the right to rent those sites that are in good condition at market rates, on the condition that they are properly maintained. Sites that are in a ruined state would be leased at a peppercorn rate. Olga Dergunova, Russia’s deputy economic development minister and the head of Rosimushchestvo, said firm plans were yet to be put in place, however.

Many of Russia’s historic properties were allowed to crumble in the post-Soviet bureaucracy of the 1990s and 2000s to make way for more lucrative residential and commercial buildings.

The city of Moscow is now actively employing the new scheme to auction monuments, which has already resulted in some positive examples of restoration. But in the regions the situation is more complicated for preservationists and potentially easier for those who want to purchase outright a monument.

Yevgeny Sosedov, the deputy chairman of the Moscow region branch of the All-Russian Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments, is leading activists in a fight to save Arkhangelskoye, the Yusupov family estate, famous for its palace, grounds and art collection. Since the 1990s, a state museum has shared the grounds with the ministry of defence, which runs a convalescent hospital there. It is ironic, Sosedov said, that estates that survived the Revolution have suffered greater damage in the post-Soviet era because in Soviet times they were, at least, in use as pioneer camps, sanatoriums or collective farms. Local officials, he said, are not interested in dealing with the smalls sums of money needed to conserve estates that have fallen into ruin. “Everyone is waiting for big money,” he said.

Some of the descendants of the pre-revolutionary elite have bought back family properties. Yury Voicehovsky-Kachaloff and his wife, Vera, spent around $100,000 to buy the remains of the mansion and grounds of Khvalevskoye, an estate in the Vologda region, which was used as a government office and school in the Soviet era. Vera Voicehovsky-Kachaloff is a descendant of Nikolai Kachalov, an official who was close to the future Tsar Alexander III. The family rediscovered the estate after being sought out and invited to the local village’s anniversary celebration in 2006. The cost at auction was high, said her husband, because a local hunting organisation was eager to purchase the territory to develop as a hunting grounds.

It cost the Voicehovsky-Kachaloffs around ten times more to restore the mansion. Financiers now based in Moscow who spent ten years living in London, they were inspired by the UK's National Trust. They plan turn the mansion into a local museum, cultural centre, Sunday school, a base for their family gatherings, and possibly as a small hotel for those interested in the culture and lifestyle of pre-revolutionary estates.

© The Art Newspaper and RIA Novosti. 22 December, 2012