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Sculptures in the Summer Garden
The Summer Garden was laid out according to the instructions and taste of Peter the Great, who wanted to have a residence "better than that of the French king in Versailles". According to the European fashion of that time, gardens were decorated with sculptures. Statues were placed along the alleys and on the squares; they decorated fountains, galleries, and garden pavilions.
The first reference to the sculpture decoration of the Summer Garden dates back to 1710. A Danish legate to the Russian court saw "more than thirty large and small statues".
The authorized delegates of Peter the Great - Savva Ragusinsky and Yury Kologrivov - purchased sculptures in Italy. Statues and busts were bought in sculptors- workshops or made a la carte. The decorators of the Summer Garden closely followed the line of subject selection popular in Europe and expressed in special reference books.
The Summer Garden collection was the first body of secular sculptures in Russia. Peter I wanted to introduce his subjects to ancient art and mythology, engraining in them a sense of artistic taste.
The sculpture decoration of the gardens of those times reflected, to a large extent, the structure of the universe (the four seasons, times of day, deities and elements), ideas of virtue and vice, symbols of prosperity and national glory.
Some sculptures are an allegory to socio-political events important to Russia. These works glorify Peter I as a reformer and his victories in war (Treaty of Nystadt, Glory, Minerva, Navigation).
Peter I amassed a formidable collection of sculptures and busts in the Summer Garden. 150 sculptures were in the front part of the garden. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, some sculptures were removed to Tsarskoe Selo, Peterhof, Pavlovsk and the Hermitage. Floods ruined other sculptures. We can now see 91 works of art in the Summer Garden - 38 statues, 5 sculpture groups and 48 busts. The majority of them were created by Italian artists, mostly Venetians, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
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