Marble Palace

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Marble Palace

Marble Palace or Mramornyi Dvorets was one of the first Neoclassical

Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the Neoclassicism that began in the mid-18th century, both as a reaction against the Rococo style of anti-tectonic naturalistic ornament, and an outgrowth of some classicizing features of Baroque architecture....
palace

Palace

A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop....
s in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a types of inhabited localities in Russia and a federal subjects of Russia of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea....
, Russia

Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
. It is situated between the Field of Mars and Palace Quay, slightly to the east from Winter Palace

Winter Palace

The Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was, from 1732 to 1917, the official residence of the Russian Tsars. Situated between the Palace Embankment and the Palace Square, adjacent to the site of Peter I of Russia's original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and altered almost continuously between the late...
.

The palace was built by Count Grigory Orlov, the favorite of Empress Catherine the Great

Catherine II of Russia

Catherine II, called Catherine the Great .The Russian empress Catherine II, known as Catherine the Great, reigned from 1762 to 1796. Under her direct auspices the Russian Empire expanded, improved in its administration, and underwent a dramatic policy of Westernization....
and the most powerful Russian nobleman of the 1760s.

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Marble Palace or Mramornyi Dvorets was one of the first Neoclassical

Neoclassical architecture

Palace

A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop....
s in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Russia

Winter Palace

Catherine II of Russia

Antonio Rinaldi

Antonio Rinaldi was an Italy architect, trained by Luigi Vanvitelli, who worked mainly in Russia.In 1751, during a trip to England, he was summoned by hetman Kirill Razumovsky to decorate his residences in Ukraine....
, who previously had helped decorate the grand palace at Caserta

Caserta Palace

The Royal Palace of Caserta, in Italian language Reggia di Caserta, is a former royal residence in Caserta, constructed for the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples....
near Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
. The combination of sumptuous ornamentation with rigorously classicizing monumentality, as practiced by Rinaldi, may be attributed to his earlier work under Luigi Vanvitelli

Luigi Vanvitelli

Luigi Vanvitelli was an Italian engineer and architect. The most prominent eighteenth-century architect of Italy, he practiced a sober classicizing academy Baroque style that made an easy transition to Neoclassicism....
in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
.

The palace takes its name from its opulent decoration in a wide variety of polychrome marble

Marble

Marble is a nonfoliated metamorphic rock resulting from the metamorphism of limestone, composed mostly of calcite . It is extensively used for Marble sculpture, as a architecture material, and in many other applications....
s. A rough-grained Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland , is a Nordic countries situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland....
granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of Intrusion , felsic, igneous rock rock . Granite has a medium to coarse texture, occasionally with some individual crystals larger than the groundmass forming a rock known as Porphyry ....
on the ground floor is in subtle contrast to polished pink Karelia

Karelia

Karelia , the land of the Karelians, is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Finland, Russia, and Sweden. It is currently divided between the Russian Republic of Karelia, the Russian Leningrad Oblast, and Finland ....
n marble of the pilaster

Pilaster

A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
s and white Urals marble of capital

Capital (architecture)

In several traditions of architecture including Classical architecture, the capital forms the crowning member of a column or a pilaster. The capital projects on each side as it rises, in order to support the abacus and unite the form of the latter with the circular shaft of the column....
s and festoon

Festoon

Festoon , a wreath or garland, and so in architecture a conventional arrangement of flowers, foliage or fruit bound together and suspended by ribbons, either from a decorated knot, or held in the mouths of lions, or suspended across the back of Cattle heads as in the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, Italy....
s. Panels of veined bluish gray Urals marble separate the floors, while Tallinn

Tallinn

Tallinn is the capital and largest city in the Republic of Estonia and of Harju County. It occupies a surface of 159.2 km? in which 397,617 inhabitants live....
dolomite

Dolomite

Dolomite is the name of a sedimentary carbonate rock and a mineral, both composed of calcium magnesium carbonate calciummagnesium2 found in crystals....
was employed for ornamental urn

URN

URN is a three letter acronym which may represent:*Uniform Resource Name, a subset of URI*University Radio Nottingham, a university radio station in Nottingham, England...
s. In all, 32 disparate shades of marble were used to decorate the palace.

The plan of the edifice is trapezoid

Trapezoid

In geometry, a trapezoid or trapezium is a quadrilateral with twoparallel sides. The term “trapezoid” is used in North America, while the term “trapezium” is prevalent in Britain....
al: each of its four facade

Facade

A facade or fa?ade is generally one side of the exterior of a building, especially the front, but also sometimes the sides and rear. The Word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
s, though strictly symmetrical, has a different design. One of the facades conceals a recessed courtyard, where an armored car employed by Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and also known by the pseudonyms V.I. Lenin and N. Lenin, was a Russians revolutionary, a Bolshevik Communism politician, the principal leader of the October Revolution and the first head of the USSR....
during the October Revolution used to be mounted on display between 1937 and 1992. Nowadays, the court is dominated by a sturdy equestrian statue of Alexander III of Russia

Alexander III of Russia

Alexander III Alexandrovich , also known as Alexander the Peacemaker reigned as Tsar of Russia from 13 March 1881 until his death in 1894....
, the most famous work of sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy

Paolo Troubetzkoy

Prince Paolo or Paul Troubetzkoy was an artist and a sculpture, of Russia's Troubetzkoy princely family, who was described by G.B. Shaw as "the most astonishing sculptor of modern times"....
; formerly it graced a square before the Moscow Railway Station

Vosstaniya Square

Vosstaniya Square is a major square in the Central Business District, Saint Petersburg of Saint Petersburg, Russia. The square lies at the crossing of Nevsky Prospekt, Ligovsky Prospekt, Vosstaniya Street and Goncharnaya Street, in front of the Moskovsky Rail Terminal, which is the northern terminus of the line connecting the city with Mo...
.

Fedot Shubin

Fedot Ivanovich Shubin is widely regarded as the greatest sculptor of 18th-century Russia.A peasant's son, Shubin was born in a Pomor village near Kholmogory and, inspired by the example of his neighbour Lomonosov, he walked all the way to St Petersburg at the age of 18....
, Mikhail Kozlovsky

Mikhail Kozlovsky

Mikhail Ivanovich Kozlovsky was a Russian Neoclassicism sculptor active during the Age of Enlightenment.Beginning his training at the Imperial Academy of Arts with Anton Losenko in 1764, he went to Rome in 1774 and then to Paris in 1779....
, Stefano Torelli

Stefano Torelli

Stefano Torelli was an Italy painter. He was born in Bologna. He studied first under his father, Felice Torelli, and then under Francesco Solimena....
and other Russian and foreign craftsmen decorated the interior with inlaid coloured marbles, stucco

Stucco

Stucco or render is a material made of an Construction aggregate, a binder , and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid....
, and statuary until 1785, by which time Count Orlov fell out of favour with the Empress, who had the palace purchased for her own heirs. In 1797–1798 the structure was leased to Stanislaw August Poniatowski, the last king of Poland

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

The Polish?Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous countries in 16th and 17th-century Europe, formed by a Union of Lublin of Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1569....
. Thereafter the palace belonged to Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich and his heirs from the Konstantinovichi branch of the Romanov

Romanov

The House of Romanov was the second and last monarchy dynasty of Russia, which ruled the country from 1613 to 1917. From 1762 until the February Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire was ruled for five generations by a line of the House of Oldenburg descended from the marriage of a Romanov grand duchess to the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp....
family.

In 1843, Grand Duke Constantine Nikolayevich

Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia

Grand Duke Constantin Nikolaevich of Russia was the second son of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.During the reign of his brother Alexander II of Russia, Constantin was an admiral of the Russian fleet and reformed the Imperial Russian Navy....
decided to redecorate the edifice, renaming it Constantine Palace and engaging Alexander Brullov

Alexander Brullov

Alexander Pavlovich Brullov Alexander Brullov was the elder brother of great Russian painter Karl Brullov, and was born in Saint Petersburg into a family of French artists: his great grandfather, his grandfather, his father and his brothers were artists....
as the architect. An adjacent church and other outbuildings were completely rebuilt, while the interior of the palace was refurbished in keeping with the eclectic

Eclecticism

Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases....
tastes of its new owner. Only the main staircase and the Marble Hall survived that refacing and still retain the refined stucco work and elaborate marble pattern of Rinaldi's original decor.

During the Soviet

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
era, the palace successively housed the Ministry of Labour (1917–19), the Academy of Material Culture (1919–36), and the Lenin Museum (1937–91). Currently, the palace accommodates permanent exhibitions of the Russian State Museum, notably "Foreign Artists in Russia (18th and 19th centuries)" and the "Peter Ludwig Museum at the Russian Museum", featuring canvases by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , more commonly known as Andy Warhol, was an United Statesn Painting, Printmaking, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the Art movement known as pop art....
and other Pop Art

Pop art

Pop art is a visual art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in UK and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of Fine Art since Pop removes the material from its context and isolates...
idols.