On Monday morning, we planned a visit to the Belvedere Summer Palaces and park.
I thought that Belvedere would be mostly about architecture and interiors (same as many summer palaces around St. Petersburg). But it turned out that only a few rooms in each palace are restored in all their baroque glory, and there was more art and more information to process.
I will still start with the architecture, though. Everything would look better during summer, but I imagine there will also be hordes of tourists when the weather is nicer (same as in Paris, Athens, and other big tourist attractions, so I am counting my blessings.
We started with the Upper Palace and the park, which actually looks a lot like the Peterhoff Uppaer Palace.
My birthday photo 🙂
I was trying the video to capture the Marble Hall in all it’s gloryThe Chapel
I realized that I will keep commenting on the paintings as much as I did it in the previous posts, I will never finish, and life goes on, so I will try to be brief, and only mention why I like this or that picture, and/or what I found unusual, including where I didn’t guess the artist.
A Medieval German painting of St Suzanne’s accusation. I love the liveliness of all people and how their characters are shownMonet: The ChiefThe Evil Mothers, see description in the next photoKlimt: The Kiss, probably his most famous workI absolutely loved this display for visually impaired people (there were several more)Klimt: SunflowerEgon Schirle: The EmbraceSeveral rooms were dedicated to the women artistsPeter Fendi: The Distraint. Unfortunately, “too close to home,” having the current housing situation in ChicagoThe gentleman on the left does not want to participate in singing and wine drinking:)Must-read
Finally, we left the Upper Palace and hurried up to the Lower Palace.
There were more exhibits here, but as I said, since I can’t imagine I can cover them all, my notes here will be even more brief. For example, I didn’t take a picture of the catalog of cencored books, but I took a picture of the note explaining which books were banned:
I find it amusing combining Church and Academia 🙂Prince Eugune of Savoy. Again, not the comments on the next photo.
And then – the Messerschmidt’s “Heads”. I saw them in other museums, but I didn’t realize there was a story (which is just nobody knows why he created all the Heads, and what he meant.
My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996.
I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future.
I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life.
As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.
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Hettie's Reflections 