19th century Russian manor style. Culture of a noble estate of the 18th - 19th centuries. The estate was developed according to the plans and plans of Abram Hannibal

Vikulova V. P.

The word “provincial”, according to the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language, in a figurative sense means “naive” and “simple.” The image of the province in our minds is often associated with the image of childhood: carefree days spent surrounded by nature; simple, uncomplicated games and fun; remoteness from the bustle of the big city, giving rise to forever memorable thoughts and experiences. As adults, we are drawn to the provinces as a source of relaxation and inspiration. For busy people creative work, including writers, this is especially true. Therefore, it is no coincidence that many philological researchers tend to consider provincial estates as a kind of cradle of Russian literature, highlighting a special direction in literary criticism - literary local history.

The definition of this direction is given in the collection “Literary Moscow Region”, published in 1998:

“Literary local history is one of the ways to understand literature, allowing you to touch the process of reflection in work of art the writer’s real impressions of the places where he was born, lived, stayed, and met with relatives and like-minded people.”

“This is true and eternal life, just as eternal is nature, which with its powerful beauty called our best writers from ancient times, inspiring them, warming them with the warmth of cozy estates, encouraging them to noble activity and pilgrimage mobility. The place of life of a writer and the writer's house in the minds of readers have a special atmosphere of spirituality. They help to know inner world writer, study his biography, creative connections, artistic heritage."

The study of estate life allows not only to reveal the origins of a literary work, but also explains a lot about the character, worldview of the author, his lifestyle and habits. The fates of poets and writers are inseparable from the Russian province, in particular, the Moscow region: A.D. Cantemira, P.A. Vyazemsky, N.M. Karamzina, A.S. Pushkina, E.A. Baratynsky, M.Yu. Lermontova, S.T. Aksakova, N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgeneva, A.I. Herzen, F.M. Dostoevsky, M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, F.I. Tyutcheva, L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhova, V.G. Korolenko and others.

On the life and work of N.V. Gogol, for example, are directly related to Abramtsevo, Bolshiye Vyazemy, Volynskoye, Konstantinovo, Mozhaisk, Muranovo, Nikolskoye, Ostafyevo, Perkhushkovo, Serpukhov, Spasskoye, Podolsk, Trinity-Sergius Lavra, Trinity-Kainardzhi, Khimki, Black Mud and many other places.

IN AND. Novikov in his book “Ostafyevo: Literary Fates of the 19th Century” notes: “Russian classic literature- from Derzhavin to Bunin - is closely connected with the life of the noble estate. It was there that great writers (Pushkin in Zakharov, Lermontov in Tarkhany, Blok in Shakhmatovo) already in childhood became acquainted with the living source of nationality. They matured as individuals in the conditions of estate life and subsequently were associated with this life all their lives. The prototypes of their heroes lived in the “village”. We must not forget that many of the literary estates are themselves highly artistic works of art. Ostafyevo, Serednikovo, Muranovo represent a unique synthesis of architecture and poetry."

Most of the former estates are now state museum-reserves, in which the interiors and atmosphere of previous years have been recreated. They lead an active cultural life, constantly developing and expanding their collections. Everyone knows the museums in Abramtsevo, Muranov, Melikhovo, Serednikov, Zakharov, Darovoy, Spas-Uglu, etc. Memorial sites are distinguished by a high degree of spiritual harmony. This is the Abramtsevo estate, where in the 80s of the 19th century artists Vasnetsov, Polenov, Golovin, Korovin, Vrubel, Levitan, Serov, Kramskoy gathered and created in the artistic circle of Savva Mamontov.

O. Sheveleva writes: “The estate’s everyday culture changed and evolved along with the estate. In the second half of the 19th century, estate life acquired new features, which was associated with the gradual movement of estate artistic and cultural centers from large estates to estates that belonged to the artistic intelligentsia and simply creative people. In them, in the second half of the 19th century, new type a manor world in which nature, art, communication of like-minded people, the way of life and the spiritual atmosphere merged into a single whole, and the architectural environment receded into the background. The nature of estate life was also affected by the mythologization of estate life, characteristic of that time, and the awareness of the estate as a kind of universal symbol of Russian life. The manor house with family portraits, old servants and the park, ancient legends appeared as living witnesses of history, connecting the past with the present.”

When talking about the past, we are used to idealizing it. Modern man's idea of ​​" magical world of an ancient landowner's estate" is often limited to museum exhibitions and poetic quotations from the classics. Behind this varnish hides the true, not always so poetic, but rather everyday life and customs of the Russian province. Let's look at them a little closer than the interior of any museum allows.

In a study by historian and museologist L.V. Belovinsky interprets the concept of “estate” as “the place of direct, permanent or temporary residence of the landowner,” in contrast to the “estate,” where the owner might not live at all.

According to art historical sources, the Russian estate flourished in the second half XVIII- the first years of the 19th century. Intensive estate construction began after the promulgation of the “Law on the Liberty of the Nobility” in 1763. The nobles received the right not to serve and retired to their estates, where they began to settle down, displaying extraordinary artistic taste. The idea was simple: the landowner's estate was supposed to symbolize in miniature inviolability and power Russian Empire. Construction was especially widespread in the Moscow region, closest to the largest educational center in Russia - Moscow.

They tried to build a country estate close to a village or village that belonged to the owner, but not close to the huts, but several hundred yards away from them. The possessions of a wealthy landowner were quite extensive and could amount to 7 dessiatines (the state tithe was a little more than a hectare, and the economic tithe was one and a half times more). Manor houses of “old world” landowners, whose life and customs are well described by N.V. Gogol, they usually hid somewhere in the lowlands, surrounded by forests and gardens. They were built from oak and pine; they were, as a rule, one-story, cramped, but warm, durable, and cozy. The owner of 1000 or more serfs could build himself a stone house, two floors, but in the old days in Russia it was believed that housing should be made of wood, most importantly - durable and warm.

For example, the main house of the Abramtsevo estate, built at the end of the 18th century, is a characteristic monument of wooden classicism. The Aksakovs bought the estate in 1843. The impressions of their guest N.M. have been preserved. Pavlova (Bitsyn) about the appearance of the estate: “From the highlands there was a view of the Vorya River, winding, in places the width of two horse leaps, and where from the dams and wider, the Vorya River, with swampy banks and countless barrels, was all in water grass and water flowers. Beyond its lowland the mountainous side rolled upward again; and up there, on the mountain, surrounded by a spruce grove, interspersed with sparse black forests, a spacious old landowner’s estate could be seen - this is the goal of our journey: Abramtsevo... A deserted wide yard, not planted to its full extent with either bushes or trees, and only in some places surrounded by a railing, received us onto his green grass. Our appearance caused the usual excitement. The front porch with a canopy, exactly like in a thousand other landowner estates of that time, opened its wide entryway to us. The wooden house, painted on planks, had a very long façade and was built in ancient times.”

A small one-story house in the village of Zakharovo under A.S. Pushkin was also made of wood, with a “red roof”. “Children with governesses and servants were housed in two outbuildings. The buildings were surrounded by a regular landscape park on the Sharapovka River - Pushkin really liked the large pond, there was a spruce forest all around, and there were only 10 peasant households with 74 serfs. Pushkin's pre-police childhood is connected with these regions. Pushkin recalled how in his childhood he ran through fields and groves and, imagining himself as an epic hero, knocked down the tops of thistles with a stick.”

In the middle of the 19th century, estates were of various sizes: from very small ones with an area of ​​10 - 20 square meters. m. to huge ones, with many residential buildings designed for several hundred servants. L.V. Tydman writes: “The estate character of housing determined the great similarity of urban and rural houses: in all cases, a residential building was a collection of different functional use premises". In other words, each manor house had a residential, front and utility (service) part. They had different areas and were also located differently. United the manor buildings in a row mandatory requirements: suitability for everyday life, practicality, maximum efficient use of the living and utility space of the house, cheap local building materials.

In the first half of the 19th century, for the house of the middle-class nobility, merchants and townspeople, an established set of premises was necessary: ​​front rooms (hall, living room, hostess's room, and at the same time the front bedroom), usually located one after the other, and living rooms intended for the family of the owner of the house and usually located on another floor (usually the top) or behind the front interiors. They tried to make living rooms smaller in size - they had to be warm in winter and comfortable for living.

The Aksakovs' house in Abramtsevo was one-story, with a mezzanine (mezzanines and mezzanines became widespread in the first half of the 19th century). Sergei Timofeevich liked it for its location and convenience, but some changes were made to the layout. The front bedroom was divided into two halves and turned into living quarters, and the doors opened into a passage room. The living room and halls began to be used for the family's daily activities. The rooms inside the house were located in this way: on the western side there was a vestibule, an antechamber, then a dining room, into which the pantry window opened; Next came the office of S.T. Aksakov, two rooms of unknown purpose, separated by a small corridor from the next one, in which the daughters Nadya and Lyuba lived. Along the eastern facade there is the room of the daughters Vera and Olga, a bedroom, a living room and a hall. A corridor in the center of the house connected its lower part with a mezzanine, divided into two large rooms. One of these rooms was Konstantin Aksakov’s office, and guests stayed in the room opposite. N.V. lived here during his visits to Abramtsevo. Gogol. Later this room became the office of Ivan Aksakov.

Historians distinguish two types of layout that developed by the end of the 18th century: centric and axial. In the first type, in the center of the building there were either dark closets and a staircase that led to the upper rooms, to the mezzanine or mezzanine, or in the center there was a large dance hall. The front and main living quarters were located around the perimeter of the building. Here is a description of his father’s house made by Afanasy Fet: “Having mentally climbed the steps of a wide stone porch under a wooden canopy, you enter a spacious vestibule... To the left of this warm vestibule, a door led to a footman’s room, in which a buffet was placed behind a partition with a balustrade, and on the right on the sides there was a staircase leading up to the mezzanine. From the front door a door led into a coal room of the same size with two windows, which served as a dining room, from which a door to the right led into a coal room of the same size on the opposite facade. This room served as a living room. A door led from it to a room that eventually became known as the classroom. The last room Along this façade was my father’s office, from where a small door again opened into the hallway.”

Another type of layout is axial: along the longitudinal axis of the house (in some cases, transverse) there was a long corridor, which was completely dark or illuminated by one or two end windows, and on the sides there were living quarters and front rooms. Uncle Afanasy Fet’s “bright and tall house, with its front façade facing a wide courtyard and its back facing a beautiful orchard adjacent to the grove, was equipped with a longitudinal corridor and two stone porches at the ends.”

The interior decoration of the manor's house was also subject to certain standards. At the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, comfortable and cheap furniture made from Karelian birch came into fashion in Russia, and walls began to be covered with satin instead of tapestries and damask. light colors and English sitchik. New principle convenience and comfort in the furnishings replaced the former solemnity. Furniture in living rooms began to be arranged “according to interests”: cozy corners for several people. In such a corner there was usually a small sofa for two or three people (usually elderly ladies and important guests), a bean table, at which it was convenient to do embroidery, knitting and pinching lint (a dressing material, later replaced with cotton wool), armchairs with trough-shaped backs, chairs. Footstools with soft covers were very popular, since ladies at that time wore light satin shoes, and with enfilading rooms in houses, drafts were common. The fireplace, located in the living room, was covered with a screen to prevent the fire from blinding the eyes. A clock in a bronze or gilded wooden case was placed on the mantelpiece in the form of an allegorical scene, and on the sides were girandoles and candelabra. There were sconces hung above the sofa, tall floor lamps on the floor, and candles in candelabra on the tables. At the beginning of the 19th century, they also began to use oil lamps- kenkets and carcels. The walls were upholstered light fabrics, decorated with engravings, stucco bas-reliefs, and watercolors. Flowers and greenery helped create a cozy and joyful atmosphere in the living room. If there were several living rooms, then one of them was intended for card games. The gambling room had special card tables covered with green cloth. They were folding and were arranged by footmen before the guests gathered, with an appropriate number of chairs.

In the dining room, along the entire room there was a long centipede table with two rows of chairs. The host and hostess always sat at the “upper” end of the table opposite the entrance, at the head of it, with honored guests on their right and left. Next, the guests were seated “in descending order”, and everyone knew their place, and persons of lower status, including children with governesses and teachers, sat near the entrance.

Some of the customs common in manor houses of the 1st half of the 19th century are curious. For example, at dinner they drank not the vodka that they drink now, but many different vodkas distilled with buds, herbs, flowers and roots. These vodkas were called pennik, polugar, tertnoye, quaternary wine, the cheapest one was fusel, poorly purified from fusel oils. The strength of alcohol was then high, but it was not this that was valued, but the softness of vodka and its “convenience” for drinking. Displaying vodka on the table in damasks and bottles was considered the height of indecency, because... In rich houses, drinking a lot of alcohol was bad manners. Dishes at dinner parties alternated in strict order: first meat, then fish, and in the intervals between them the so-called “entreme” was served: cheeses, asparagus, artichokes, which were supposed to take away the taste of the previous dish. Wines were consumed according to the food: red with meat, white with fish, and champagne with any. The wine was not supposed to be mixed, the smell of the previous wine was not supposed to remain in the glass, and therefore a lot of different glasses and cups were placed with the dishes. Lackeys carried dishes around the guests, starting from the upper end, where persons of high status sat. The servants felt subordination, and if there was not enough food for everyone present, they could sneak some tasty dish past the not very respected guest. After dinner, the men went to the owner’s office to smoke and drink coffee and liqueurs, and the ladies retired to the hostess’s boudoir, where they also drank coffee.

In addition to dinner parties, guests were often invited to a tea party, which was most often held in a small living room or small dining room. The tea was poured by the hostess or the eldest daughter. The first cup was served to the guests by footmen, and then they left and the empty cups were handed over to the hostess for rinsing. A new portion of tea was poured by children or young people.

For relaxation and quiet conversations, the house could also have a so-called sofa room, where along the walls there were leather sofas with many pillows, 2-3 small tables, armchairs and soft chairs. It could also be called coal (that is, corner) and bosquet. This room was richly decorated with greenery. For example: “We passed a lilac living room, filled with furniture from Elizabethan days, were reflected in a high wall mirror, a bronze gilded cupid, leaning on the same clock, followed us with a smile, and we found ourselves in a small but very cozy room; Along its two walls, in the shape of the letter G, stretched a solid green sofa... “Sofa, sir...” said the clerk...”

Among the features of the estate interior, the personal libraries of the owners are interesting. Sometimes these were huge, tastefully selected collections, compiled by specially hired educated people or second-hand book dealers. Professionals created book catalogs for such libraries, in some cases even printed in a printing house. At Prince M.A. Golitsyn had an extensive collection of rare old printed books, adjacent to 132 paintings housed in the mansion. In the manor houses there were also original fake libraries, where the cabinets were closed with doors with the spines of books cut out and painted on them, and behind them were stored shoe lasts, wine bottles and other rubbish. Sometimes decoys served as decoration for real libraries, which, in addition to books, could contain scientific instruments (globe, telescope), folders with engravings, geographical maps, etc.

It is curious that memoirists, when describing the everyday life of estates, rarely mention icons. It was not customary to keep them in the front rooms; portraits of ancestors, watercolors, engravings, bas-reliefs on patriotic themes, and children's drawings were placed there. The icons were hidden in personal chambers - the owner’s office and the hostess’s bedroom. In an ancient house there could be small icons with many family icons, but usually there were two or three, mostly family ones. In the 30s of the 19th century, imitations of icons became very popular: a large three-part engraving from Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna” can also be seen in Yasnaya Polyana by L.N. Tolstoy, and in P. Fedotov’s painting “The Breakfast of an Aristocrat”. Athanasius Fet recalled an oil copy of Raphael's Madonna, sitting in a chair with a baby in her arm, John the Baptist on one side and St. Joseph in another way: “My mother explained to me that this is the work of the greatest painter Raphael and taught me to pray to this image.”

The decoration of the front rooms was sculpture - marble originals and good plaster copies, bronze and porcelain miniatures. In the second quarter of the 19th century, plaster sculpture imitating porcelain and bronze appeared in middle-income homes, replacing expensive Sevres, Saxon or Gardner porcelain. Previous antique themes in interior design gave way to patriotic themes. In the 40s, daguerreotypes became widespread; they, along with photographs, were hung on the walls and placed on special shelves on desks. At the same time, paper wallpapers, which were hand-painted with watercolors, also began to come into fashion. The rooms were decorated with gilded bronze candelabra, sconces, chandeliers - Elizabethan, Catherine, Pavlovian, Alexander, Nicholas, as well as mantel clocks in bronze or gilded wooden cases, often standing on special tables under glass covers. On high windows lush lambrequins hung. The parquets were inlaid and their ornamentation matched the painting of the ceilings.

In a separate personal account the landowner indulged in mental pursuits and received close male friends. The office could serve the owner at the same time as a bedroom. An indispensable accessory of this room is a large desk with a bronze writing utensil and a lamp. The device consisted of a sandbox (a tin box with sand for blotting ink), a penknife, a knife for cutting books (it could be silver, bronze, steel, bone or wood), a stick of sealing wax for seals and a seal for envelopes. The lamp was a high rod with two symmetrically located candles and a transparent paper screen sliding along the rod so that the fire would not blind the eyes. Over time, oil lamps, kenkets and karsels, began to take the place of dim candles. The usual components of the office interior were bookshelf and a rack for smoking pipes. By the way, some ladies smoked back then. Around 1815, cigars brought by the Russian army from foreign campaigns came into use, and by the middle of the 19th century, ladies' paquitoskis appeared - thin long cigars made of cut tobacco, wrapped in a maize leaf. At home they smoked mainly pipes with long cherry stems and large cups. They were usually smoked by house servants - for example, a Cossack woman. Guests, in addition to pipes, were treated to Havana or Manila cigars.

In addition to the items described above, in the office there was a large leather sofa, on which the valet made the master’s bed in the evenings. At that time, the spouses did not sleep together; each of them had a separate bedroom. The husband visited his wife in her boudoir, dressed in a dressing gown, but then returned to his place. A. Fet testifies that “father mostly slept on the couch in his study...”. Above the sofa there was usually a carpet with weapons hanging on it, most often Turkish and Caucasian. Adjoining the office Walk-in closet the owner, which was in charge of the valet. In addition to clothes - dresses, linen and underwear, there was a shaving table with all accessories, a bedside table, a basin for washing, a jug, soap and towels. In the dressing room there was also that device that we now call a “toilet” and “convenience”, but then called a “outhouse”. This “convenience” was a large chair, sometimes made of mahogany, with a seat in the form of a blank box with two lids. One of the covers was solid, and under the second there was an oval hole. In the box under the lids there was a night vase, which was periodically taken out by footmen to the latrine. Since not all gentlemen went to the bathhouse to wash, if necessary, the hostess brought a huge vat into the dressing room or boudoir and fetched water from the kitchen.

The lady's boudoir was located not far from the owner's office. There was a double bed in it, partitioned off with screens, and at its feet was a huge rectangular basket for bed linen. In the boudoir there was also a secretary with drawers for letters and writing materials, and there were several armchairs and chairs. The ladies' restroom, adjacent to the boudoir, was an analogue of the owner's dressing room. There was also “convenience” here and there was a toilet - an elegant ladies table with a mirror and a lifting table top, under which there were drawers for toiletries.

The interiors of the premises where the great writers of the 1st half of the 19th century lived and worked were atypical for rich manor houses of that time. The main room of the writer in the manor house was, of course, his study. There is a description of the office of the historian and writer N.M. Karamzin in Ostafiev - on the second floor of the house, with a window to the park. Contemporaries were struck by the ascetic furnishings of the room, which remained untouched for a long time. M.P. Pogodin visited Ostafyevo in 1845 and left detailed memories. He found in the office “bare plastered walls painted white; by the window there is a large pine table, not covered with anything, near it wooden chair. On trestles with boards against the opposite wall, manuscripts, books, notebooks and just papers were laid out in disarray. In the room there was no wardrobe, no bookcase, no music stand, no chair, much less a carpet or pillow. Only a few shabby chairs stood haphazardly in the corner. Truly nothing superfluous, everything is just for work. Any little thing that could distract or dispel thought has been removed. In a word, noble simplicity." The environment in which N.V. lived and worked was just as harsh. Gogol in Moscow on Nikitsky Boulevard: in simple painted floor a carpet, by the window there is a work desk covered with green cloth, in the corner behind a screen there is a narrow, hard bed.

The writer N. Pavlov left in his memoirs a description of the office of Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov in Abramtsevo. “Pavlov emphasized that the simplicity and efficiency of the office surprisingly corresponded to the character of the owner. The main place was occupied by a huge desk, all littered with books, notebooks, and folios. Above the table is a portrait of M. Lomonosov made of ivory.”

Thus, the general property of the interior of a writer’s office is its functionality, rigor, even asceticism: nothing superfluous, everything is just for work and concentrated reflection.

Life in the old estate “flowed along a long-established channel, undisturbed by anything.” The district aristocracy lived for its own pleasure: the landowners went hunting, supported numerous servants, jesters, hangers-on, organized holidays, picnics, played cards, played off village boys, yard dogs, roosters and geese; they poisoned bears and bulls caught and raised in pits with huge, specially bred Medellan dogs. The provincial boredom was partly compensated for by long and hearty meals, receiving guests, lengthy interviews with the village headman, and the analysis of conflicts between servants.

The Russian landed nobility was extremely diverse: from the “old world” to the new bureaucratic aristocracy. Manor life was just as varied. Some landowners in the 1st half of the 19th century still preserved the ancient Russian way of life, as, for example, in the Aksakov family. Others took a more secular tone. Little by little, ancient customs and entertainment in the form of Christmas fortune-telling and mummers began to fall out of use. Only Y.P. Polonsky you can find a mention of fortune telling on things with subliminal songs in the maiden's room and that the grandmother, sitting in the living room and playing solitaire, listened to these songs. Many memoirists recall picnics in nature, with carpets, pillows and samovars (carpets were not cherished in noble circles at that time due to the fact that they large quantities imported from Turkey, Persia, the Caucasus, Khiva, Bukhara). Bare picked mushrooms themselves, fished, and went berry picking.

As mentioned above, in the Abramtsevo house of the Aksakovs, the way of life bore the imprint of patriarchy. The Aksakovs emphasized the ancient character of their estate, without trying to remodel it, and limited themselves to the most necessary changes: repairing the main house and building a residential outbuilding (in 1873, Hartmann’s “Workshop” was built in its place). According to the recollections of contemporaries, the busiest rooms in the house were the dining room, S.T.’s office. Aksakov and the living room. The first half of the day was usually spent in individual studies; by lunchtime, the hosts and guests gathered in the dining room and in the evenings they gathered in the living room, where readings, games of chess, and proverbs were held. The occupations of the inhabitants of the estate also included village concerns. The estate was not profitable, but the owners were not too keen on organizing the economy, maintaining only relative order in the affairs of the estate. The family's range of concerns included monitoring the vegetable garden, berry fields, and, from the second half of summer, making jam, syrups, pickles, and drying mushrooms. And although the hospitality of the Aksakovs was well known, the main charm of the estate was the possibility of privacy. The Aksakovs often spent not only summer holidays in Abramtsevo, but also winter months, which was explained by both material difficulties and reluctance to depend on the secular conventions of the city. In the village of S.T. Aksakov, as you know, indulged in his favorite pastimes - fishing, picking mushrooms, daytime and evening festivities in the forest and estate park and, of course, literary creativity. He wrote to his son Ivan about his house in Abramtsevo in January 1844: “A wonderful, peaceful, secluded corner where there is everything we need.”

Many landowners in provincial estates did not completely trust the elders and managers, who often stole from their masters, but personally delved into the intricacies of economic life: they went to the fields and to the threshing floor to supervise the work, planted gardens, attended the breeding of horses in their stud yards, looked into the cowsheds and to poultry houses. Quite a few landowners themselves were involved in the design and construction of mills, constructing beehives, threshing machines, and winnowing machines, which were then “introduced” in the nearest counties. Owners of large estates sometimes went to their “outside” villages to check how things were going and wrote instructions to the managers. The ladies made jam and marshmallows, salted cucumbers and dried mushrooms, but they did not do it themselves, but only supervised the work. An indispensable activity was meetings with managers and elders, receiving reports, keeping entries in work journals, and settling accounts in the mornings or evenings. Doing housekeeping on the estate meant exercising control and accounting. Small-scale nobles, who had to think about a piece of bread, could themselves go out into the field with the peasants and wander around the tithes; another landowner could mow a row or two with his own hands. Some people practiced crafts at home. Turning, introduced into fashion among the nobility by Peter I, was especially popular.

Such mundane concerns were also not alien to creative people. For example, the poet E.A. Boratynsky, even in his childhood and youth, showed a keen interest in agriculture- gardening and gardening. In 1841, he dismantled a small and cramped house in Muranova and began building a new one. At this time, the poet and his family moved to the neighboring estate of the Palchikovs, Artemovo, three kilometers from Muranov. While working on preparing for publication a new collection of his poems, “Twilight,” Boratynsky did not forget about economic concerns. With the onset of warm weather, every morning he went to Muranovo to observe the construction, returned for lunch, and in the evening he went there on foot again with his older children. In addition to building the house, Boratynsky in 1841-1842 was intensively involved in the arching of the forest and the construction of a sawmill. His letters to Nikolai Vasilyevich Putyata are full of considerations and calculations regarding the sale of timber. When a saw mill was installed in Muranovo, Boratynsky proudly wrote to Putyata: “Yesterday, March 7, on my name day, I sawed the first log at my saw mill. The boards are distinguished by their cleanliness and correctness."

The Muranovsky house differs in its architecture from the traditional manor buildings of that era with the inevitable portico and mezzanine. Since the time of Boratynsky, it has not undergone significant alterations. The building consists of three parts: a two-story main building, a one-story extension and an adjacent two-story tower. The entire structure is wooden, constructed from vertically placed logs, but its main part and tower are lined with brick.

The Boratynskys settled in the new Muranovo house in the fall of 1842. The routine of life was unchanged: children still had classes with teachers, evenings were devoted to reading the latest Russian and foreign literature, creative ideas were ripening in the poet’s head, but before the onset of cold weather, household worries distracted Boratynsky from writing.

Since that time, much has changed in the decoration of the rooms of the Muranovo house. Furnishings that belonged to the first inhabitants of the house were mixed with the belongings of its later owners. But family portraits of the Engelhardts still look out from the walls of the hall and the green living room; in the dining room, in the old place, there is a round sliding centipede table. In the room that was previously E.A.’s office. Boratynsky, there is a desk-bureau made of simple birch, the work of Muranovo serf craftsmen. According to legend, the poet himself made the drawing for it. On the table there is an inkwell, a writing pad and various small items that belonged to Boratynsky. On the walls are his portraits, images of his relatives and friends; among them is a portrait of A.S. engraved by Utkin. Pushkin. When, after the death of Boratynsky, Muranovo fell to Sofia Lvovna Putyata (nee Engelhardt), the estate became the provincial center of literary life. Husband S.L. Putyati Nikolai Vasilyevich was not a good business executive, like Boratynsky, he gave preference to cultural interests. His first literary guests in Muranov were N.V. Gogol and S.T. Aksakov. One of the rooms in top floor Since the time of Putyata, the house has been called “Gogolskaya”: the writer spent the night in it. The comfortable squat “toad” sofa on which the creator of “Dead Souls” rested has been preserved here. Above the sofa hangs a little-known portrait of Gogol that belonged to Putyata - a lithograph by Shamin from 1852.

Daughter N.V. Putyati Olga Nikolaevna recalled how S.T. Aksakov motionless and intently caught pike perch, sitting with his fishing rods on the shore of the Muranovsky pond. The writer was a big fan of fried pike perch and called them “lean beef.” I visited Putyata in his estate near Moscow and F.I. Tyutchev. After the poet’s death, his youngest son Ivan Fedorovich, married to Olga Nikolaevna Putyata, moved the furnishings of his father’s office and bedroom to Muranovo.

In the room that was once E.A.’s office. Boratynsky, comfortable upholstered furniture is placed, conducive to rest and reflection. Although some of the original furnishings have been preserved, the items of F.I. predominate here. Tyutcheva. A desk, an inkwell, a quill pen with traces of ink, a pad made of worn leather, a green lampshade - all this is Tyutchev’s. In the blotter there is an envelope from a letter to Tyutchev from his son-in-law I.S. Aksakova.

The main value of Muranov is that it is a one-of-a-kind example of an average estate, introducing us to the life of cultural representatives of the Russian nobility.

When talking about the life and morals of a provincial estate, we must not forget about the servants, since it was they who provided their masters with everyday comfort.

"Room" servants lived in the master's house. They ate in the so-called “dining room,” and none of them had their own rooms or even beds. An exception was made for a few, primarily the valet, who was considered the first person among the servants and could occupy a room of about 8 square meters. m. The cook and his assistants slept right in the kitchen. Other room servants did not have their own housing and at night they lay down on the floor, spreading felt next to the masters' rooms in order to be at their fingertips. “Everyone slept on the floor, on felts,” wrote Ya.P. Polonsky. - Felt at that time played the same role for the servants as mattresses and feather beds do now, and the old woman Agafya Konstantinovna,... my mother’s nanny, and our nannies and footmen - all slept on felt, spread out, if not on the floor, then on the chest or on the chest."

In the house of A.A.’s father. Feta, from the small maid’s room, “having opened the door to the frosty attic, one could see between the steps of the stairs the felt and pillow of each girl, including Elizaveta Nikolaevna, stuffed. All these beds, full of frost, were brought into the room and spread out on the floor...”

Next to the master’s bedroom there was also a “maid’s room”, where unmarried female servants had to sew, embroider, knit and carry out various household tasks for the mistress. The “maid’s room” was considered to be both a living and working room, and the “footman’s room”, which often served as an overnight place for footmen, was one of the front rooms; its second name was “entrance living room”. If in a city mansion a doorman always had to be on duty in the hallway, then in a village setting there was no such order: the owners heard the approach of the carriage from afar and themselves saw the guests through the window.

Room servants in plural They were called by the word “people”, in the only sense - “man”, “boy”, “girl”, and the servants could remain in the rank of “girls” and “boys” until old age. They were rarely called by name, but if a person was elderly, distinguished and distinguished by some skill, he could also be called by his patronymic: Dormidontych, Stepanych, Yevseich. House servants, unlike servants, did not have specific duties and carried out small household tasks and whims like “give me a handkerchief” and “run for kvass.” The servants were called by a bell: in the servants' quarters there was a bell, from which a wire ran to a sonnet, a long embroidered ribbon with a tassel at the end, which had to be pulled. There could also be an improved bell with a spring, located on a table or night table near the bed. They called it by pressing a button.

There were enough servants on the landowners' estates. “At that time they kept a lot of servants,” recalled Afanasy Fet. . Poet Ya.P. Polonsky wrote about his grandmother’s Ryazan house: “This hallway was full of footmen. Login was there too, with an earring in his ear, former hairdresser,... and Fedka the shoemaker, and the tall, pockmarked Matvey, and my uncle's valet, Pavel... The whole girl's room... was divided into corners; In almost every corner there were icons and lamps, chests, folding felts and pillows... Food was carried to the table across the courtyard. There lived a butler and his wife, Login’s wife and daughters, Pavel’s wife and daughters, a cook, a coachman, a postilion, a gardener, a poultry worker and others... I don’t remember how many of my grandmother’s servants there were, but I believe that together with the girls. There were at least sixty people as shepherds and boners who came from the villages.” Household servants had a different status than house servants. They were specialists, and each was entrusted with a specific task: the black cook prepared food for the serfs, the gardener and his assistant worked on the flowers, the gardeners, the cowgirl, the janitor, the coachmen, the grooms, the huntsmen, the postilions, and the carpenter also performed a narrow range of duties. They lived in a human hut, or less often in small separate huts. Such servants were needed even before to a certain extent they were taken care of. Of the room serfs, only the cook was valued; he was bought for a lot of money, sent to study, and, to a certain extent, his insolence and drunkenness were forgiven.

According to contemporaries, house servants on estates often stole and drank, robbed serfs, essentially their own comrades in misfortune. But there are other examples - for example, Pushkin’s Savelich and Aksakov’s Evseich (the prototype of the latter was a real man). These servants took care of their young masters in a fatherly way. Some of the serfs saw themselves as part of the noble family, and the owners often treated them as respectable and respected, not allowing their children to be rude to the same nanny. Afanasy Fet noted: “Of course, any impoliteness on my part towards any of the servants would not have been in vain.” It is noteworthy that the higher the position of the nobleman, the more polite he was with the lower ones. Memoirists, recalling genuine nobles, note their even attitude towards people of any position, even servants. A real aristocrat could even say “you” to a lackey. This did not humiliate him, since he did not need to prove his position. On the contrary, the lower a person’s position, the more contemptuous he was towards those who stood at a lower level. The most demanding and capricious clients in taverns were footmen.

Devoted servants - nannies, valets, maids, housekeepers - grew old along with their masters and took their last breath or died in their arms, bitterly mourned, like close relatives. The gentlemen had a special spiritual closeness with their nurses, as well as with their foster brothers and sisters. S.T. Aksakov left the following words about his nurse: “The nurse, who loved me passionately, again appears several times in my memories, sometimes in the distance, furtively looking at me from behind others, sometimes kissing my hands, face and crying over me. My nurse was a peasant peasant and lived thirty miles away; she left the village on foot on Saturday evening and came to Ufa early on Sunday morning, having looked at me and rested, and returned on foot to her Kasimovka to catch up on corvée. I remember that she came once, and maybe even came sometime, with my foster sister, a healthy and red-cheeked girl.”

The age of Russian estate life with all its nuances has long passed, but the words of Academician D.S. are true. Likhacheva: “An indicator of culture is the attitude towards monuments.” As long as literature exists, researchers will turn to memories of bygone times in order to trace the path of becoming a classic, to identify important details his life, the origins of the creation of a literary work. According to D.S. Likhachev, the material atmosphere in which the writer lived “also becomes a literary document and, accordingly, an affiliation of our national culture. The writer’s house, household items, the surrounding landscape - all these are necessary components of his “artistic universe”. Material monuments are the connecting link between the writer and the modern reader. Often, thanks to acquaintance with them, much of what otherwise requires special analysis becomes clear.”

Interest in people is always higher than interest in dead things, therefore, of the literary estates for our contemporaries, the most attractive are those that, although not always shining with special architectural merits, preserve for us the images of the classics and the unique spiritual atmosphere of the era of the first half of the 19th century. This is not only Abramtsevo, Muranovo, Ostafyevo, Serednikovo, but also Mikhailovskoye, Tarkhany, Yasnaya Polyana, and many other memorable places in the Russian outback. They all need our special, caring attitude.

Literature:

1. 1. Aksakov S.T. The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson. - Collection Op. In 4 volumes - T. 1. - M., 1955.
2. 2. Belovinsky L.V. Hut and mansions: From the history of Russian everyday life: Scientific and educational publication. - M.: IPO "Profizdat", 2002. - (Ser. "History of Everyday Life". Issue 1).
3. 3. State Historical, Artistic and Literary Museum-Reserve Abramtsevo: Photo Guide / Comp. I.A. Rybakov. - M.: Planet, 1991.
4. 4. Grech A.N. Wreath for estates. - In the book: Monuments of the Fatherland: Almanac, 1994, No. 3 - 4 (Issue 32). — P. 5.
5. 5. Noble nests of Russia: History, culture, architecture: Essays. - M.: Publishing house "Giraffe", 2000.
6. 6. Literary Moscow Region: Textbook. allowance / Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation; Moscow ped. univ. - M.: Publishing house "VEK", 1998.
7. 7. Museum-reserve "Abramtsevo": Essay-guide. — 2nd ed. - M.: Image. art, 1988.
8. 8. Museum-Estate “Abramtsevo”: Guide / USSR Academy of Sciences; Institute of Art History. - M., 1960.
9. 9. Muranovo: Album. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1986.
10. 10. Novikov V.I. Bolshie Vyazemy. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1988. - (Monuments of the Moscow Region).
11. 11. Novikov V.I. Ostafyevo: Literary destinies of the 19th century. - M.: Knowledge, 1991.
12. 12. Pakhomov N.P. Abramtsevo. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1969.
13. 13. Pakhomov N.P. Abramtsevo Museum. - M.: Sov. artist, 1968.
14. 14. Pechersky M.D. Ostafyevo. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1988.
15. 15. Pigarev K. Muranovo. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1948.
16. 16. Polonsky Ya.P. Prose. - M., 1998.
17. 17. Tydman L.V. Izba. House. Palace: Residential interior of Russia from 1700 to 1840s / GUOP; Research Methodological Center for Population Protection; Research Museum of Russian Architecture named after. A.V. Shchuseva. - M.: Progress-Tradition, 2000.
18. 18. Fet A.A. Memories. - M., 1983.
19. 19. Sheveleva O. Manor life of the late XIX - early XX centuries. in the memoirs of contemporaries (using the example of the Mikhailovskoye estate) // Sheveleva. htm.

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This exhibition was created under the leadership of the chief curator of the Pavlovsk Palace Museum A.M. Kuchumov in 1976. Based on literary and documentary sources, paintings, drawings and photographs, typical interiors of that era were recreated. In 2000, the exhibition opened again, with changes and additions. Moving from hall to hall, as if moving in a time machine, a whole century passes before your eyes. Through the interior, the way our ancestors arranged their living space, you better understand the psychology and philosophy of the people of that time, their attitude and worldview.

17 halls are divided into 3 semantic blocks:

• Russian noble estate 1800-1830s,
• metropolitan aristocratic mansion of the 1830s-1860s,
• city ​​apartment 1860-1890s.

Interiors 1800-1830s

At the beginning of the 19th century typical home the nobility had a manor house or a city mansion. As a rule, a large family and numerous servants lived here. The state rooms were usually located on the second floor and consisted of a suite of living rooms, a boudoir and a bedroom. Living quarters were located on the third floor or mezzanines and had low ceilings. The servants lived on the ground floor, and there were also office premises here. If the house was two-story, then the living rooms, as a rule, were on the ground floor and ran parallel to the service premises.

The end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries was the time of the dominance of classicism, which presupposes a clear rhythm and a unified style of arranging furniture and art. Furniture was usually made of mahogany and decorated with chased gilded bronze or strips of brass. Interest in antiquity spread to Russia from France and other European countries. Therefore, in the interior of this time we will see antique statues and corresponding decor. Under the influence of Napoleon, the Empire style, created by the architects C. Percier and P. Fontaine, with its spirit of luxurious imperial residences from the Roman Empire, came into fashion. Empire style furniture was made from Karelian birch and poplar, often painted green - like old bronze, with gilded carved details. Clocks and lamps were made of gilded bronze. The walls of the rooms were often painted in pure colors - green, gray, blue, purple. Sometimes they were covered with paper wallpaper or imitated paper wallpaper, smooth or striped, with ornaments.

The enfilade of rooms in the exhibition opens (late 18th – early 19th centuries). There could be a valet on duty in such a room. The mahogany furniture with brass overlays is made in the Jacobean style.

Sample for Portrait(1805-1810s) became the corresponding room in the estate of Count A.A. Arakcheev in Gruzino. Unfortunately, the estate itself was completely destroyed during the Great Patriotic War. The portrait room is decorated in the early Russian Empire style, the walls are painted with striped wallpaper.

Cabinet(1810s) was a mandatory attribute of a noble estate. In the interior presented in the exhibition, the furniture set is made of Karelian birch, the desk and armchair are made of poplar wood. The coloring of the walls imitates paper wallpaper.

Dining room(1810-1820s) – also made in the Empire style.

Bedroom(1820s) is functionally divided into zones: the bedroom itself and the boudoir. There is an icon case in the corner. The bed is covered with a screen. In the boudoir, the hostess could do her business - do needlework, correspondence.

Boudoir(1820s) was located next to the bedroom. If conditions allowed, it was a separate room in which the mistress of the house went about her business.

As a prototype Living room(1830s) served as the living room of P.V. Nashchekin, a friend of A.S. Pushkin, from a painting by N. Podklyushnikov.

Young man's office(1830s) was created based on Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” (it is interesting to compare it with, which became the prototype of the Larins’ house from this novel). Here you can see the desire for convenience and comfort, they are actively used decorative fabrics. The laconicism inherent in the Empire style is gradually disappearing.

Interiors 1840-1860s

The 40s - 60s of the 19th century were the time of the dominance of romanticism. At this time, historicism was popular: pseudo-Gothic, second Rococo, neo-Greek, Moorish, and later pseudo-Russian styles. In general, historicism dominated until the end of the 19th century. The interiors of this time are characterized by a desire for luxury. The rooms are filled with an abundance of furniture, decorations and trinkets. Furniture was made mainly from walnut, rosewood, and sacchardan wood. The windows and doors were covered with heavy draperies, and the tables were covered with tablecloths. Oriental carpets were laid on the floors.

At this time, W. Scott's chivalric novels became popular. Largely under their influence, estates and dachas in the Gothic style are being built (I have already written about one of them -). Gothic cabinets and living rooms were also installed in the houses. Gothic was expressed in stained glass on windows, screens, decorative elements finishing of rooms. Bronze was actively used for decoration.

The late 40s and early 50s of the 19th century were marked by the appearance of the “second Rococo”, otherwise called “a la Pompadour”. It was expressed in imitation of the art of France of the mid-18th century. Many estates were built in the Rococo style (for example, the now dying Nikolo-Prozorovo near Moscow). The furniture was made in the style of Louis XV: rosewood furniture with bronze decorations, porcelain inserts with paintings in the form of bouquets of flowers and gallant scenes. Overall, the room looked like a precious box. This was especially true for the women's quarters. The rooms on the men's side were more laconic, but also not devoid of grace. They were often decorated in an “oriental” and “Moorish” style. Ottoman sofas came into fashion, the walls were decorated with weapons, and the floors were covered with Persian or Turkish carpets. There could also be hookahs and incense burners in the room. The owner of the house dressed in an oriental robe.

An example of the above is Living room(1840s). The furniture in it is made of walnut, in decorative finishing Gothic motifs can be traced.

Next room - Yellow living room(1840s). The set presented in it was made for one of the living rooms of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, presumably according to the drawings of the architect A. Bryullov.

Young girl dressing(1840-1850s) made in the “walnut rococo” style. A similar room could be in a metropolitan mansion or in a provincial estate.

IN Cabinet-boudoir(1850s) in the “second Rococo” style, expensive furniture “a la Pompadour” is presented, veneered with rosewood, with inserts of gilded bronze and painted porcelain.

Bedroom of a young girl(1850-1860s) is striking in its splendor; it is also an example of the “second Rococo”.

Interiors 1870-1900s

This period is characterized by a smoothing out of the differences between noble and bourgeois interiors. Many old noble families gradually became poorer, losing influence to industrialists, financiers, and intellectuals. Interior design during this period begins to be determined by the financial capabilities and taste of the owner. Technological progress and industrial development contributed to the emergence of new materials. Thus, machine lace appeared, and windows began to be decorated with tulle curtains. At this time, sofas of new shapes appeared: round, double-sided, combined with whatnots, shelves, jardinieres, etc. Upholstered furniture appears.

In the 1870s, influenced by the 1867 World Exhibition in Paris, the Louis XVI style came into fashion. The “Boule” style, named after A.Sh. Boule, who worked under Louis XIV, is experiencing a rebirth - furniture was decorated with tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, and bronze. The rooms of this period are decorated with porcelain from Russian and European factories. The walls were decorated with numerous photographs in walnut frames.

The main type of housing is an apartment in a tenement building. Its design was often characterized by a mixture of styles, a combination of incompatible things only due to the similarity of color, texture, etc. In general, the interior of this time (like architecture in general) was eclectic in nature. The rooms were sometimes more reminiscent of an exhibition hall than a living space.

Pseudo-Russian style is coming into fashion. This was largely facilitated by the architectural magazine Zodchiy. Country cottages were often built in this style (for example, Podmoskovnoe). If the family lived in an apartment, one of the rooms, usually the dining room, could be decorated in pseudo-Russian style. The walls and ceiling were covered with beech or oak panels and covered with carvings. Often there was a massive buffet in the dining room. Peasant embroidery motifs were used in the decorative design.

At the end of the 1890s, the Art Nouveau style emerged (from the French moderne - modern), expressed in the rejection of imitation, straight lines and angles. Modern is smooth curved natural lines, new technologies. The interior in the Art Nouveau style is distinguished by unity of style and careful selection of objects.

Raspberry living room(1860-1870s) amazes with its pomp and luxury of the Louis XVI style, combined with the desire for convenience and comfort.

Cabinet(1880s) is eclectic. Various, often incompatible items are collected here. A similar interior could be in the house of a prestigious lawyer or financier.

Dining room(1880-1890s) made in Russian style. A mandatory attribute was the chair “Arc, ax and mittens” by V.P. Shutov (1827-1887). After the All-Russian Exhibition in St. Petersburg in 1870, they gained enormous popularity. Soon other craftsmen began to produce similar pieces of furniture with various variations.

Maple living room(1900s) is a wonderful example of Art Nouveau style.

Thus, the entire 19th century has passed before our eyes: from the Empire style with its imitation ancient culture at the beginning of the century, through a fascination with the styles of historicism in the middle of the century, eclecticism in the second half of the century and unique, unlike anything else, modernism at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.

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was supposed to amaze with beauty and luxury, these are state rooms intended to be admired, but was it possible to work and relax in them? No wonder the kings loved their country residences more.
The nobles also sometimes had stately mansions in St. Petersburg and something simple in the provinces. And often only the simplest manor houses in the province. In the paintings you can see both the most luxurious ones, which the painters of the Winter Palace captured for posterity, and modest drawings of perhaps serfs, in which family comfort and noble life are depicted.

Podklyuchnikov N. Living room in the Nashchokins’ house in Moscow

What we see is that the walls are mostly monochromatic, hung with paintings, the furniture is of the same type, the upholstery becomes more varied over time, but the ceilings are varied, although the height of the rooms is often low

Podklyuchnikov N. Cabinet P.N. Zubova. 1840

Sredin A.V. Room in the Belkino estate 1907.

Living room in the Znamenskoye-Rayok estate

Tyranov A.V. Interior in a noble house.

Rebu Sh. Avchurino. 1846

Interior in Soimonov's house on Malaya Dmitrovka in Moscow. Unknown artist.

Sverchkov V.D. Interior view of the room. 1859

Zelentsov K.A. In the rooms

Zelentsov K.A. Living room with columns

Unknown artist. Living room interior

Peach L. Porechye Estate. Library.

Peach L. Porechye Estate. Museum. 1855

Rakovich A.N. Interior. 1845

Tikhobrazov N.I. Interior of the Lopukhins' estate. 1844

Tikhobrazov N.I. St. Petersburg interior

Premazzi L. Mansion of Baron A. L. Stieglitz. White living room.
This is just about the luxurious noble mansions, which were painted by the same artists who painted the Winter Palace. The main financier of the empire, chairman of the state bank, a man close to the royal family, had a magnificent palace in St. Petersburg, which was later acquired for Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich.

Premazzi L. Mansion of Baron A. L. Stieglitz. Golden living room

Premazzi L. Mansion of Baron A. L. Stieglitz. Living room


Premazzi L. Mansion of Baron A. L. Stieglitz. Front office.

Premazzi L. Mansion of Baron A. L. Stieglitz. Baroness's office.

Premazzi L. Mansion of Baron A. L. Stieglitz. Library

Arkhangelskoye Among the remarkable architectural ensembles built near Moscow in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Arkhangelskoye rightfully occupies one of the first places. Among the remarkable architectural ensembles built near Moscow at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, Arkhangelskoe rightfully occupies one of the first places.

In Arkhangelsk, according to A.I. Herzen, “man met nature under different conditions than usual. He demanded from her one change of scenery in order to imprint his spirit, to give natural beauty artistic beauty, to humanize her...”

In Arkhangelskoye, in the process of building and decorating the estate, work that lasted almost 50 years, a whole galaxy of serf artists, architects, sculptors, cabinetmakers, and crystal makers grew up—a real art school. The main role in it was played by the “painting establishment”, where many serf painters came from.

Already at the beginning of the 19th century, when the richest nobleman and philanthropist Prince N.B. Yusupov became the owner of the estate, Arkhangelskoye turned into a repository of enormous artistic values. One art gallery contained more than 500 paintings, including paintings by such outstanding masters as Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Claude Lorrain, D. B. Tiepolo, F. Boucher, J. B. Greuze, J. L. David, and many other painters of the 16th century.

After the death of N.B. Yusupov, in the summer of 1833, A.I. Herzen and N.P. Ogarev came to Arkhangelskoye together with friends from the university. Herzen's memoirs, despite their brevity, are the most vivid and expressive of everything that has ever been written about Arkhangelsk. Herzen, the only one of his contemporaries, left us an excited, colorful picture of the estate of the 30s of the last century, a very lively and imaginative picture. Here is one of the poetic passages dedicated to Arkhangelsky, where Herzen conveyed the impressions of his friends: “...They liked everything, even this time their romanticism was not indignant against trimmed trees, which are important and prim, like waiters of the last century, in a wig and French wearing gloves, stood on both sides of the road. White marble busts peeked out from underneath them.” And further: “Eyes ran wild, graceful images surrounded on all sides...” Temple-monument to Catherine II. The Empress appeared here in the guise of the ancient Roman goddess of justice Themis.

The palace was decorated with first-class sculpture, rare furniture, antique carpets, porcelain and bronze. All this magnificent palace, a park of rare beauty, a theater with decorations by the famous P. G. Gonzaga amazed the imagination of contemporaries. The walls of the old house remember N.M. Karamzin, A.S. Pushkin, P.A. Vyazemsky, A.I. Herzen and N.P. Ogarev. However, very few people at that time could see the artistic treasures of the estate and the wonderful ensemble where architecture and nature merged together.

In 1827, “in early spring on horseback,” Pushkin first came to Arkhangelskoye. The beauty of the estate captivated him. Two years later, he wrote his message “To the Nobleman,” which began with the words: Freeing the world from the northern shackles, As soon as the marshmallow dies in the fields, flowing, As soon as the first linden tree turns green, To you, friendly descendant of Aristippus, I come to you... On the title page of the manuscript, Pushkin depicted with his pen this living old Catherine nobleman, who had seen a lot, who knew everyone and everything, a small, hunched old man in a funny wig with a bow, slowly walking, leaning on a cane, along the park alley. Everything, everything has already passed. Their opinions, talk, passions are forgotten for others. Look: around you, everything new is boiling, destroying the old. Pushkin kept his promise to appear in Arkhangelskoye once again and came here together with P. A. Vyazemsky, apparently at the end of August 1830.

In 1903, shortly after Russia celebrated the centenary of Pushkin’s birth, a bust of the poet was erected in Arkhangelskoye, and lines from the ode “To the Nobleman” were carved on the pedestal. “This is a complete picture of the Russian 18th century, painted in marvelous colors,” V. G. Belinsky wrote about these poems.

“My deaf Mikhailovskoye...” A.S. Pushkin visited Mikhailovskoye for the first time in 1817 after graduating from the Lyceum. In the Pskov village, in constant communication with nature, his talent blossomed. A.S. Pushkin visited Mikhailovskoye for the first time in 1817 after graduating from the Lyceum. In the Pskov village, in constant communication with nature, his talent blossomed. From 1824 to 1826, Pushkin spent here in exile. Separated from his friends, deprived of any hope of quick release, Pushkin was sad: From 1824 to 1826, Pushkin spent here in exile. Separated from his friends, deprived of any hope for a quick release, Pushkin yearned: But happiness plays with me maliciously: But happiness plays with me maliciously: I have been running around homeless for a long time, I have been running around homeless for a long time, Wherever autocracy blows; Where will autocracy go? Having fallen asleep, I don’t know where I’ll wake up. Having fallen asleep, I don’t know where I’ll wake up. We always persecute, now into exile We always persecute, now into exile I drag out my chained days... (“To Yazykov”) I drag out my chained days... (“To Yazykov”)

Alley Kern Mikhailovsky Park was the poet’s favorite place for walks, the source of his creative inspiration. It has two delightful alleys - spruce and linden. The linden alley, where Pushkin and Kern met, has a second name - “Kern alley”. It ends with semicircles of trees forming green gazebos. Mikhailovsky Park was the poet’s favorite place to walk and a source of his creative inspiration. It has two delightful alleys - spruce and linden. The linden alley, where Pushkin and Kern met, has a second name - “Kern alley”. It ends with semicircles of trees forming green gazebos.

The world of the Russian estate is surprisingly attractive and mysterious for modern people. As soon as you enter the gates of the ancient neglected park, delve deeper into the alleys, peer at the silhouette of the palace reflected in the mirror of the pond, and a sad languor seizes your soul. Before us is only a trace of a past life, two centuries ago full-blooded and in full swing.

Researchers argue when the concept > appeared. Back in the 17th century they preferred to say >. For Muscovite Rus', a country house with land and outbuildings is an economic phenomenon rather than a cultural one. Until the middle of the 18th century. Wealthy owners in the bearish corners of Russia rarely cared about gardens and flower beds: there were enough apple trees, pears, strawberries, currants in the forest, and flowers and medicinal herbs- in the meadows. Allocating arable land for them was considered a ruinous undertaking. The master who laid out the park, dug cascades of ponds and built gazebos risked being branded a dangerous original in the eyes of his neighbors.

The European idea of ​​a house in the lap of nature as a small paradise made its way very slowly. Near the capitals, pleasure cottages appeared under Peter I. During the Age of Enlightenment, estates began to be perceived as > offices of philosophers and poets, as a shelter for philanthropists, patrons of the fine arts. It is not surprising that the tone was set by the royal residences, each of which in its own way embodied the idea of ​​Eden on earth. Their buildings were copied and removed like wax casts to be carried to the farthest corners of the country. The personality of the owner left an indelible imprint on the family nest - the master became not only a customer, but also sometimes an architect, gardener, builder, whose tastes determined the appearance and inner spirit of the estate. That is why the story about noble nests is inseparable from the story about their owners and inhabitants.

Back in the 1930s. It seemed to domestic art historians that after the revolution the world of the Russian estate was destroyed forever. Miraculously, only a few corners of the nobles' nests were preserved. It took a tremendous amount of work to restore the destroyed estates. Much has been lost forever. What you can now come into contact with is only >, in the apt expression of A. T. Averchenko. But even these fragments make it clear how beautiful the whole was.

ESTATE is a complex of residential, utility, park and other buildings that make up one economic and architectural whole. Traditional peasant estates included a hut, threshing floor, barn, stable, etc. In the 17th-19th centuries. a type of landowner's estate developed (manor house, service buildings, park, church, etc.). There were also city estates (house, service buildings, garden). The production and residential center of a collective farm or state farm is also called an estate.

Long gone > because it was golden because it was perfect. For Russian nobles, the ideal reality was embodied in their family estates. To create an extraordinary fairy-tale, harmonious world is the main task of any estate construction. This world had its own traditions, passed on from generation to generation; special style of behavior of household members, style >. And so it was created very carefully and in detail. Every detail of the estate, even the smallest, was thoroughly thought out. Colors, plants, furniture - everything had an allegorical meaning.

Nature itself is God's ideal garden, Garden of Eden, complemented by bridges, fences, gratings. Every tree, every bush meant something. White birch trees are a stable image of the homeland. The fragrance of linden trees in the driveways is a reminder of the heavenly ether. Acacia served as a symbol of the immortality of the soul. Oak was a special tree. It gave the estate greatness, power, strength and, as a rule, it was planted in the center of a specially designated clearing. And the reeds near the water symbolized solitude. But aspen never decorated the estates, as it was considered >.

So, gradually the ideal world became reality in the estate. It was like a theater where a ceremonial fiction is shown on stage, and everyday life goes on behind the scenes. And the estate just became a stage in this world.

The construction of the estate and its arrangement were carefully hidden from prying eyes. High fences were erected around construction sites, access bridges were dismantled, and technical documents. The estate should have appeared unexpectedly, as if by magic magic wand. This is exactly how St. Petersburg arose overnight, in a deserted swamp.

Life in the estate was clearly divided into formal and everyday life. And the living quarters were divided accordingly.

Layout of noble estates.

In the second quarter of the 19th century, fundamental changes occurred in the layout of city houses and noble estates. If earlier in the mansion the basis of the internal plan was the enfilade, which set strict geometry, now it has been replaced by a free grouping of rooms around one or several central rooms (living room and hall). The different heights of the ceilings were preserved, the number of purely formal rooms was reduced, but the living rooms became more spacious.

New houses are being built with an asymmetrical, picturesque layout of rooms offset from the axis. Among the fashionable and talented architects of that time, it is worth highlighting A. I. Stackenschneider and G. A. Bosse.

Interior of rooms in a noble estate.

From the point of view of architectural stylistics, their plans declare a departure from adherence to a single style (classicism, and later Empire) and a transition to a variety of styles, which in the last century was often called eclecticism.

Guides for the design and decoration of residential buildings are beginning to promote new, now fashionable artistic trends, recommending building “in the tastes of Roman, Greek, Italian, English, Dutch, Venetian, Gothic and Chinese.” This style diversity is recommended, in particular, in interior decoration and the decoration of houses in the album “New Room Decorations, or Samples of Drawings for Elegantly Decorated Rooms,” published in 1850. Here they offered drawings of the hall in the “Greek taste”, the dining room and reception room - in the “Byzantine”, the living room - in the “New French”, the bedroom - in the “Chinese”, the bathroom - in the “Oriental”, the boudoir - in the “Pompadour” taste, garden hall or winter garden - in the “Pompeian style”, etc.

From an ideological point of view, the changes indicated a shift towards private, personal life and the final disappointment in the civic and social ideals of the Age of Enlightenment.

Individualism placed comfort and isolation on a pedestal as the antithesis of the old open space and “transparent” interiors.

However, the “old-fashioned” houses with enfilades, perceived as an anachronism, were still strong. They were demolished extremely rarely, but were redeveloped whenever possible. At the same time, some of the doorways were not walled up, but simply covered with carpets.

In an ordinary noble house at the beginning of the 19th century there were both rooms that had become fashionable and common in the previous 18th century, as well as “new items”.

Nomenclature of rooms.

The nomenclature of the state rooms has been preserved almost completely: in a noble mansion there was certainly a hall - a large room for dancing and card games, which was also used as a dining room, and a living room, similar in function to modern ones. In rich aristocratic houses, the nomenclature of rooms was much more complex.

Among the representative premises, the heritage of the past includes not only state bedrooms, but also portrait ones - special rooms for storing and displaying portraits of ancestors, which lasted until the 2nd half of the 19th century, when they were supplanted by the advancing bourgeois culture: merchants, doctors and lawyers did not have picturesque images of great-grandparents.

And the dining room became a fashionable novelty, at that time - separate room for public lunches and dinners.

Among the purely “aristocratic” household rooms, it is worth noting the reception room, the boudoir, which served as a women’s study, and also the library. But they were not new products.

The generally accepted measure of the dimensions of a room in those years was not the area, but the number of windows.

So, in addition to living rooms - a bedroom, a nursery and a toilet (which was then called a "restroom"), almost every house had a "sofa" - a room intended for relaxed communication between adult family members, relatives and close friends. The sofas, furnished, of course, with a variety of sofas (including corner sofas), as well as sofas, were a legacy of the past.

The same cannot be said about cabinets, which became widespread in the 19th century.

Men's office.

The intellectual and economic center of > the life of the estate was the men's office. But they always furnished it very modestly. The most fashionable was the Dutch or English cabinet. Ascetic oak furniture with modest upholstery was placed there, yes a table clock, secretary, desk or bureau, at the owner's choice. There was very little decoration in the office. Only an exquisite decanter and a glass for “morning consumption” of anise and anise were considered indispensable smoking pipe. Books, telescopes, globes, and astrolabes played a special role in the interior of the office.

Women's office.

Another thing is the women's office. Since it had a dual function - a workplace and a salon, it was designed differently. The spaces between the windows were occupied by large mirrors. They reflected portraits, watercolors, and embroideries. The furniture was mainly made of Karelian birch. A significant place was reserved > for handicrafts, writing and drinking tea. Fabrics played a big role in the women's office - curtains, draperies, carpets. And also - a sentimental set of the 18th-19th centuries: flowers, wreaths, cupids, doves, heart pillows, painted porcelain and beaded designs. Fabrics played a major role in shaping the image of the women's office. Curtains, draperies, upholstery, floor carpets - all this was carefully selected. Here, against a light background, there were realistically painted flowers, wreaths, bouquets, cupids, doves, hearts - a sentimental set of the turn of the century. They were echoed by the same cupids in bouquets made of painted porcelain, textile and bead designs.

The main rooms of the noble estate included the hall, living room and dining room.

The hall is the most representative room in the house, the most solemn in character, cold and formal. The walls of this room are mostly hung with portraits. Portraits densely cover the walls of the hall, which are sometimes called portraits.

The hall in the St. Petersburg apartment of F.P. Tolstoy was decorated with paintings very sparingly, but with signs of good taste: >. Contemporaries described the first two rooms as follows:

“chandeliers and lanterns hanging from above, and on the sides there are gilded lamps, some burn like heat, others shimmer like water, and, combining their rays into a cheerful, solemn radiance, they cover everything with sacredness,” wrote G. R. Derzhavin. Contributed to this

“sacredness” and numerous mirrors, which became an indispensable attribute of the front hall. The “purity” and “righteousness” of the owners of the estate could be read in their smooth, shiny surfaces.

The dining room, which served as a hall and could also be combined with a hall, was also decorated with portraits. In the hall of the official, in public places there are portraits of emperors, former and living. In some cases, other subjects, such as landscapes, can be placed in the halls.

Living room.

The living room also has 3 windows, with the same sofa and round table in the back and a large mirror above the sofa. On the sides of the sofa there are armchairs, chaise longue tables, and between the windows there are tables with narrow mirrors covering the entire wall. fantasies were considered prohibited, and all living rooms were in the same mood>>. The cold white, blue, greenish tones of the entire living room were only slightly supported by gold and ocher.

The furniture in the living rooms was covered with covers. The ceiling was decorated with a lush lampshade. The gilded carved wood of the walls and furniture added solemnity. The center of the hall was always the ceremonial portrait of the reigning person. But later this trend passed, and the walls were occupied by numerous portraits of household members.

The living room is a less strict and formal room than the hall, so the variety of subjects in the paintings is much wider. The portraits here are not only family ones. The series of heroes of 1812 was very popular. Portraits from the portrait gallery of the Winter Palace were engraved, and anyone could purchase a complete set or part.

Portraits of biblical and evangelical heroes and heroines, portraits of Rembrandt, and portraits of unknown persons could hang in the living room. The living room could accommodate playful and even frivolous scenes; still lifes, city and marine landscapes, genre scenes. The living room can be completely hung with paintings.

Portraits throughout the 19th century. do not disappear from the living room, but in the second half of the 19th century. More and more paintings of other genres, mainly landscapes, appear in it.

In addition to painting, in the living room, unlike the hall, there could also be graphics - drawings, engravings, watercolors. In the living room, wax or ceramic medallions and bas-reliefs could hang on the walls.

Dining room.

The dining room, as a separate room for shared meals, was formed only in the middle of the 18th century. Before this, tables were set in any suitable room in the house. The walls of the dining room were decorated with paintings and still lifes painted in oil, family portraits and paintings on historical themes.

They tried to put as little furniture in the dining rooms as possible. The chairs were very simple and comfortable. The tables were extendable and portable. And only in the 19th century a huge table became the main subject of the living room.

Slide buffets with displays of porcelain and glass were obligatory. Later they were replaced by glass display cases. Small console tables attached to the wall served the same purpose. Porcelain had a special place in Russian dining rooms. Not a single estate could be imagined without him. He performed not so much a domestic as a representative function - he spoke about the wealth and taste of the owner. Because good porcelain specially mined and collected.

Metal utensils were practically not used in estates; they were made of gold or silver. Moreover, if gold dishes told guests about the wealth of the owner, then porcelain - about refined tastes. In poorer houses, pewter and majolica played the same representative role.

By the way, the tablecloth, like the table napkin, did not appear at all from a passion for cleanliness, but according to the requirements of prestige. At first, only the owner of the house used a large napkin. As with all prestigious things, it was customary to embroider the owner’s monogram on the napkin.

The bedrooms were drowned in expensive fabrics - damask, satin, velvet. They were on windows, on bed canopies and sometimes on doorways. Lush curtains for windows and bed canopies, decorated with bouquets of feathers (>), were made from the same fabrics. The Baroque era left abundant floral ornaments in noble bedrooms. Upholstered furniture They tried to upholster the seating here with the same fabric, thus creating a set.

A candlestick was placed on an elegant night table. The central place of the bedroom was occupied by a tea table, on which there was a service.

Paintings in a noble estate.

In the office of Alexander I hung > - the emperor patronized the arts. In the offices of his successors and Grand Dukes there are images of soldiers of various branches of the military and paintings of battle scenes. In the offices of empresses and grand duchesses there are ordinary portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes.

In the offices of residential buildings, portraits made up the majority. But, as in living rooms, they are diluted with other subjects - interior, genre, landscape, images of animals. In the office of the architect A. Bryullov - architectural projects, landscapes, cleaning of architectural details. In Zhukovsky's office, on a blank wall, there are four paintings on either side of the fireplace. A portrait of his wife may hang in the governor's office, or a landscape in the count's office. Stroganov has portraits of his favorite trotter in his office. In the provincial cabinet there are views of Venice, portraits, copies of Rembrandt. There are engravings in the office of the old house. In the bedroom of the old countess there are portraits, in the bedroom of a noble country estate - >. In the grandmother's room there are images, portraits of Metropolitan Platon and Blessed Agafya. In the young lady's room there are engravings and pictures cut out from books. In the sofa room, along with paintings in dark frames, there are prints in paper frames. In the bedroom, along with portraits, there are landscapes. In the reception rooms of the imperial palaces of the second half of the 19th century. - landscapes. In the billiard rooms there are portraits again. In living rooms, portraits predominate, along with which landscapes and images of animals can hang. As in the office, the wall can be occupied by a land map or a plan of the estate. In one room, which performs several functions, in the office area above the table there are portraits and landscapes, in the living area above the sofa there are portraits, in the sleeping area above the bed there are graphics with genre and cult scenes.

Household servants rarely had their own room, but in those cases when the servant got one, he decorated the walls with drawings or paintings. In the room of the German valet there is a portrait of Frederick II. In the housekeeper's room there are two children's drawings. In the cook's home, that is, in the kitchen - a popular print or engraved picture or >. In the maiden room, as a rule, there are no other images except the icon. But in the servant's room, which had more freedom and at the same time rights, the walls could be covered with colorful pictures.

In the interior, which is stylistically coherent and tastefully decorated, the painting does not stand out from the general ensemble and does not declare its priority. Easel art does not argue with applied art and is not opposed to it. And at the same time, the paintings have their own separate functions, their own decorative, informational and semantic tasks, originally inherent in them, which draw an invisible, but very tangible line between them and things of utilitarian purpose. Elitism without protrusion, exclusivity without disdain - signs of style and good taste in the era of late classicism. The works hanging in the interior reveal not only the taste of the author, but also the taste preferences of the owner. Here you can meet Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Van Dyck. The canvases of the Russian artists Chernetsov hung in the front room of the artist F. I. Tolstoy, who had his own justified and verified point of view on Russian painting and Russian artists, gifted and with good professional training at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Many people painted without special education and they succeeded a lot in this. The paintings of Lermontov, Zhukovsky, and Alexander Bestuzhev are widely known.

But at the same time, foreign masters were valued higher in Russian public opinion. While in Russia, the French artist Vigée-Lebrun completed several dozen portrait orders. Foreign artists, traveling around Russia and painting portraits of nobles, dignitaries and wealthy landowners, made a fortune for themselves in a short time. Given the steady popularity of the genre, this was not difficult.

The landowners had their own home artists, and not every one of these artists was educated at the Academy of Arts, and then in Italy. Home-grown artists could paint interiors, or they could dabble in easel painting. Artists at this level could make signs, paint and paint public houses. The landowners also kept household icon painters, who painted portraits from time to time.

The main genre of works of easel art decorating rooms is oil painting, that is, works executed in color using durable materials. Painting is representative and prestigious. Painting introduces coloristic accents or shades into the interior - depending on the degree of color activity of the wall surface and the painting itself.

Watercolor is also very popular, the technique of which was developed in the first half of the 19th century. achieved perfection, ahead of other genres, including oil, not only and not so much in the degree of realistic rendering, but in poetry, lightness, transparency, richness and at the same time the nobility of the color system. Oil painting is for representation, watercolor is for the soul; in oil - inviolability, the eternal drama of ancient conflicts, and in watercolor - sincerity and intimacy; They were proud of oils, they loved watercolors. However, watercolor has a number of technical disadvantages. The paper on which it is made is much less durable than canvas. Oil painting can be washed, cleared of dirt, and wiped with a wet cloth for the holidays. Watercolor is most afraid of water getting on its surface. And finally, watercolor works are made from pigments, some of which are not lightfast. Over time, the work loses color, the pigment is destroyed by light, and the colors fade.

Pencil drawings also hung on the walls. In those days, everyone learned to draw and everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, could depict nature. Friends exchanged drawings, or even simply gave them as gifts. They often drew a portrait unnoticed and then gave it as a gift - it was a pleasant surprise. Mothers, in the heat of matrimonial worries, displayed drawings of their daughters. On the wall of the living room there could hang not only those drawn in pencil, but also those cut out from books or magazines - such pictures could be of very acceptable artistic merit. In the young ladies' room there could also be pictures from fashion magazines hanging. In the kitchen, the cook's home, there were pictures of fondant jars on the wall.

There was a special attitude towards portraits, the older generation revered the gallery of well-born ancestors, while the youth, infected with incipient nihilism, brought into the general and private value relations unconditional skepticism. However, before receiving guests, according to tradition, at the same time as removing covers from the furniture and cleaning the copper fittings of doors and windows, they wiped the eyes of family portraits with a wet rag.

Portrait is the most common genre in the interior. Man and his image occupied the main place in fine art. A portrait, figuratively speaking, is a literary genre; behind the screen of forms and folds of matter one can discern one’s upbringing, social status, character, property qualifications, merits, passions, talents, ethical level and, ultimately, fate.

There were portraits for myself, for memories that are dear to the heart, a bridge to the past, best years, filled with feelings now lost, friends and family now dead, passions and hopes now devalued.

And the portraits are for others, in the state rooms, on display, as a stronghold of class fanaticism, not for a moment allowing the guest to forget his place in the complex but stable ladder of hierarchical relations.

Portraits were ordered as a gift to a loved one, often a miniature, which could hang on the wall, or could stand on the desktop, always before one’s eyes.

Portraits in the interior are not only family ones. Engraved portraits of heroes of 1812 were very popular. In Korobochka’s room, along with images of birds, there is a portrait of Kutuzov. In Sobakevich's living room >

Portraits had social value, carried certain ideals, not only reflected tastes or appeased genealogical arrogance - they, like banners, symbolized ideological orientation, strength of conviction, political loyalty or oppositional protest. > not only in the offices of officials and public places, but also in an ordinary residential building.

But portraits of Saint-Simon, Voltaire, and encyclopedists could also hang in the offices, which was a sign of freethinking. A young man might have hanging portraits of writers who defined the literary tastes of the time: Goethe, Hugo, Balzac, Jules-Janin, Lamartine. In the era of romanticism, her apologist, Byron, was a must in a young man’s room. The best Russian poets of the era, Zhukovsky and Pushkin, were also popular.

Portrait in manor house could hang like a work of art, the depicted image could be unfamiliar, not belong to any of the relatives or famous people, but simply occupy space that there is nothing else to fill.

Often there are paintings hung with taffeta. These are portraits that should not be accessible to prying eyes.

Portrait is a genre that becomes obsolete much earlier than others, and therefore loses first its family value and then its social value. Images of people - not genre, but portrait - were no less popular than portraits of relatives and friends. Mythological characters were widespread - both Greek, Roman, and biblical mythology, and real persons could coexist with folklore ones.

Engraved portraits could hang in the homes of officials or townspeople. They willingly purchased and hung on the wall popular prints, the heroes of which were Miliktrisa Kirbitevna, Eruslan Lazarevich, Foma and Erema, Eating and Drinking.

The engravings are free of lightfastness problems. They are replicated, which is why even the most artistically perfect of them are inexpensive. Engravings not only successfully complement the compositions when organizing the surface of the wall, but also form independent selections. Sobakevich’s living room walls are hung with engraved portraits of commanders; in many houses in the second quarter of the 19th century. Engraved selections of heroes of 1812 were fashionable.

Images in the interior.

In every room of the estate there were always icons and lamps. There were also special prayer rooms.

Images are also present in the front rooms, although not necessarily in all. In the hallway, which is also the servant's room, the image hangs not only for the servants: everyone entering the house is baptized with the icon. The images also hang in the halls, very often in the living rooms, which were the permanent place of spending time for most family members: the housewife, the owner, children, adult daughters. An icon is also required in the owner’s room - the office. The maiden's room, which was intended for female servants in the house, also could not do without an image.

The most valuable thing in the room is the icon, and its qualification is determined not so much by its market value as by its spiritual content.

If the interior contains gold, silver or gems, then you can be sure that they decorate the icon case or icon. In simpler houses there are simpler icon cases, not rich, discreet, but always neat, copper vestments brightly polished. Instead of an icon case, a shelf with several icons could be nailed to the room or there could be a stand with images.

In front of each image is an unquenchable lamp, which could be glass, gold or wood, depending on the general decoration of the icon. The icon case, in addition to images, could contain a cross and relics. On holidays or other solemn or important occasions, a tallow or wax candle was lit in the icon case.

Bedrooms, like figurative ones, could be completely furnished with images - this largely depended on the piety of the hostess. Usually in the bedrooms of ladies and young ladies the icon case hung above the bed, at the head.

In living and state rooms, if there were paintings of secular content, icons and icon cases were placed separately, outside the general composition. Being deliberately isolated, they, despite their insignificant dimensions, much smaller than those of the paintings, occupy a dominant position. Their usual position is under the ceiling, in a corner - but diagonally or flat on the wall.

Carpets and tapestries.

Carpets and tapestries at the beginning of the 19th century. can be seen occasionally on the walls. In the second half of the 19th century. Hanging walls with carpets has become a mass phenomenon. Applied art objects - frequent guests on the walls: clocks, flowerpots, bookshelves, thermometers, barometers, musical instruments, sonnets. Pipes, pipes, and weapons (daggers, pistols, shotguns) were very common and even fashionable in interiors - they decorated the offices, most often of bachelors; the collections were the pride of the owner, a measure of vanity and an object of envy. The fashion for this decoration could be called an empty, meaningless pursuit of prestigious novelty, however, each of these things was an object of applied art, sometimes unique; often high-class, using expensive and even precious materials. Independent artistic value was represented by compositional structures made from these objects, which, like hanging paintings, can be distinguished into a separate genre of interior art.

Artificial lighting.

In the 19th century, artificial lighting was incomparably softer than in the twentieth and current ones, therefore, when trying to imagine the interior of the 19th century, we must make allowances for light sources.

Firstly (which is clear to almost everyone), lighting based on candles and lamps (oil) muffles the colors and shine, so that the Empire interior, despite the abundance of gilding, in the evening could turn into a cozy, and even intimate one.

Secondly (and less obviously), although today we value candlelight for its liveliness and awe, in the 19th century these properties were fought to the best of our ability: the focused and fluctuating light of a candle “breaks” the space and creates a feeling of anxiety. Which, by the way, was widely used by Hitchcock and other masters of thrillers. To prevent the "horror effect" in the 19th century, lampshades and light-diffusing screens were widely used.

In general, the interior lighting system was built, like modern analogues, on a combination of lamps that direct the light flux down (downlights) and direct the light upward (uplights). Moreover, there were, as a rule, more uplights (floor lamps, table portable and stationary lamps).

Parks and gardens.

A park was an essential part of a noble estate. Gardens and parks were an important part of noble estate culture. They often occupied a large area and were combined with adjacent groves and forests. Depending on local conditions, the park was located on three, two, or one side. Sometimes it surrounded the estate. Each estate park was closely connected with the life of its owner, unique, and carried with it some peculiarities of tastes and views of its creator. Depending on the time, manor parks with different layouts were created in Russia. Here Russia followed the West. In the 18th century, the so-called “French parks” predominated. The plan here was based on a rational scheme, a clear geometric system for the arrangement of alleys. Alleys played an important role in the creation of parks. A system of alleys helped to navigate the estate complex. Alleys directed people's attention to architectural structures: pavilions, gazebos, ponds.

At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, landscape parks (English) appeared, a romantic touch was introduced into them, and the natural surrounding comfort served as their background. There are ruins, grottoes, and all sorts of surprises in the park. Often the layout of parks combined elements of regular and landscape parks. The park hosted festivities, fireworks, theatrical performances, and rides on artificial ponds and canals.

A rich spiritual life flowed in the noble estates. Nature, architecture - the whole environment was conducive to creativity.

The composition and structure of estate gardening and park complexes were largely determined by the natural components of the landscape - relief, water system and green space. Most often, a combined terrain was chosen for the construction of estates, which was a combination of flat terrain and a slope. Preference was given to sites on the banks of rivers and lakes. The spatial basis of the garden and park complex, as a rule, consisted of forests and meadows.

Preferences when creating regular and landscape compositions gardening complexes were distributed as follows. Landscape plans were arranged on combined or hilly terrain. Regular - combined or flat. All estates that included landscape plans, and most estates with regular structures had natural water bodies.

Based on the nature of the planning structure, the province's estates can be divided into two groups - > and >.

The group's estates > began to be created in the middle of the 18th century. and a hundred years later they accounted for almost 90% of the total. Their core consisted of a manor house, outbuildings and a front courtyard, arranged on the basis of an orthogonal system. In most of the estates there was one economic zone, which could be located at a distance from the core or close to it and, as a rule, outside the garden and park complex. The four types within the group differed in the nature of their interaction with the highway of the estate complex or its core.

The group's estates > began to appear in the 1820s. Their core was formed by the manor house and the open green space in front of it and was always located away from the highway. Most estates had one economic zone remote from the core. The two types of compositions in the group differ in the nature and length of the passage to the core through the territory of the garden and park complex.

The estates could be included in the garden and park complex individually or in different combinations five basic components: an orchard, a garden park, regular and landscape parks, a forest park. Among the estates of the St. Petersburg province, four types of planning structures of garden and park complexes have been identified, differing in the number and combinations of basic components, as well as different compositional solutions. The most common was a garden and park complex consisting of an orchard and a landscape park.

Regular layouts were usually created on the basis of a parallel, orthogonal or radial grid of paths, alleys and borders, which could be compositionally related to any structure or area of ​​the estate. Fruit orchards and garden-parks most often had an independent structure. Regular parks always had an alley, path or visual compositional axis that correlated them with the manor house.

Landscape parks differed significantly from each other in area (from 2 to 100 hectares), number of planning areas (from one to four) and character (landscape, mixed, romantic, water, exotic). The most common were landscape parks with an area of ​​up to

5.5 hectares, representing a single landscape area, formed on the basis of a large clearing.

Forest parks had a planning structure of two types - with a sparse network of walking paths or based on two or three intersecting clearings. Forest parks were not associated with the manor house until the end of the 19th century. , when their planning began to use techniques of compositional connection with the core, characteristic of landscape parks.

Two types of structural varieties of the garden and park complex were created most widely and took longer than others (about 100 years):

1. a regular park with a layout based on an orthogonal lattice, adjacent to the façade of the manor house and coordinated with it;

2. orchard and landscaped park located around the residential area.

Both types of garden and park complexes were formed in the estates of the group >.

To create gardens and parks in all estates, work was carried out to transform the original landscape. The most large-scale measures related to the relief and water system were the damming of rivers and streams and the creation of pits for ponds and channels. The green area of ​​the estates was supplemented (sometimes completely formed) by planting trees of the main and exotic species for the region and shrubs. Most often, to create a park area of ​​one estate, 4-5 main tree species and one type of exotic. The most common and most variably used tree in manor parks was linden.

The structure of the road and path network was formed by alleys, walking roads and routes, views and simple paths, paths, sometimes clearings. Of the park structures, the most popular in estates were gazebos, bridges and water mills. To mark the boundaries, earthen ramparts were most often built.

Noble nests of Russia. These words contain a whole world, a cultural layer of the era. The world of the estate appears as a social phenomenon with its own traditions and foundations. The memory of the noble nests is preserved in the sounds of modern songs, in which nostalgic notes are heard >, a mysterious look from under a veil, and the sweet smell of lilacs.