Sadovaya St., 7, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 196601
The gallery was named after its architect, Charles Cameron. It is located on a hillside, at the border between the formal and landscape parts of the Catherine Park. The idea to build the gallery belonged to Catherine II. Construction of the gallery began in 1784 and was completed in March 1787. Cameron's Gallery is a place from which one could see not only Tsarskoye Selo but the world in general; it marked a viewpoint elevated above everyday life. In height, Cameron's Gallery matches the Catherine Palace, but because it stands on a gentle slope, the height of its lower floor increases significantly as it moves away from the palace due to the gradual elevation of the plinth, made of hewn blocks of Syas stone slabs.
The walls of the gallery’s first floor are pierced by three-part window openings, with the piers between them laid out in roughly hewn Pudost stone. The lower floor serves as the base for the colonnade of the second tier, consisting of 44 white fluted columns with Ionic capitals. Departing from the usual proportions in the ratio of column height to the intervals between them, Cameron slightly increased the latter, giving the colonnade a special lightness and grace. Enlarged window openings of the glazed hall in the central part of the second floor give the building complete transparency. The juxtaposition of the powerful arcades of the lower floor and the light upper floor defines the artistic image of Cameron’s Gallery, embodying the philosophical idea of the eternal contrast of existence. Thanks to the large continuous window-doors, the upper floor of the gallery appears completely transparent.
Enlarged window openings of the glazed hall in the central part of the second floor give the building complete transparency. The juxtaposition of the powerful arcades of the lower and the light upper floors defines the artistic image of Cameron’s Gallery, embodying the philosophical idea of the eternal contrasts of existence. The architect repeated the motif of four-column porticos several times: at the two main entrances — on the east and west sides — they support the pediments of the colonnade, and on the elongated north and south facades they are repeated for decorative purposes. The frieze and cornice encircling the gallery are treated in a strict classical tradition: the frieze is decorated with elegant wreaths, the cornice with lion masks. For the finishing of the gallery’s first floor, as well as for the Cold Bath, the Ramp, and the Hanging Garden, C. Cameron used Pudost stone, quarried near Saint Petersburg, in the village of Pudost; this material reminded him with its color and texture of the “weathered” stones of antiquity.
Construction of the gallery began in 1784: in March the architect submitted its plan and model to the Tsarskoye Selo Construction Office. These documents have not survived: the drawings were returned to the architect for construction work, and after his death, Charles Cameron’s widow left for England, taking the entire family archive with her. Since then, its traces have been lost. The terms of the contract were secured by the contractor’s pledge: Keza gave his stone house in Saint Petersburg as collateral until the construction was completed and accepted by the high patrons.
During the construction of Cameron’s Gallery, changes were made only in the creation of the staircase leading to the second floor. In the original project, the staircase rose from the park only to the rooms of the first tier; the two upper flights leading to the colonnade were added later by order of Catherine II: thus, the stair flights designed by Cameron connected the lower floor with the colonnade. The changes made to the staircase project entailed changes in the design of the gallery’s railing. Originally, it was planned to decorate the gallery with an iron railing with gilding; the new railing, which has survived to this day, was painted white. It wraps around the colonnade and descends along the stair flights. Cameron solved the monumental staircase with ingenious simplicity and decorated its side supports with two colossal statues of Hercules and Flora, cast in bronze.
In March 1787, the construction of Cameron’s Gallery, supervised by the architect of the Tsarskoye Selo Construction Office I. V. Neelov, was completed. Its upper tier remains the same as it was two centuries ago. Only the rooms on the first floor, used as living quarters for court ladies and maids of honor (now housing temporary exhibitions), were remodeled. The colonnade served as a kind of belvedere: from it opens a magnificent view of the Great Pond and the landscape park, and once also of the more distant surroundings. The gallery dominates the park, and its colonnade is visible from afar.
In the 1780s–1790s, bronze busts were installed on the gallery, made in the foundry workshop of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts — a unique sculptural collection preserved in its historical place, chosen for it by Catherine II, to this day. The Empress often walked on the gallery, said she “loved it,” and often admired the views from it. Alone, surrounded by busts of great predecessors, she reflected on the fate of the world. The sculptural collection that adorned Cameron’s Gallery by the will of Catherine II embodies a well-thought-out ideological program and forms a unified cycle reflecting the worldview of the great Empress.
Since 1788, the Empress, together with her secretary Khrapovitsky, arranged on the colonnade and on the southern facade of the Cold Bath bronze copies of famous antiques — portrait busts of great writers and philosophers of antiquity, mythological and historical heroes. Expressing her views in the selection of historical figures, similar to English aristocrats of the first half of the 18th century, she included in her sculptural gallery images of the goddess Juno, Plato, Homer, Ovid, Seneca, Cicero, and Demosthenes. It was no coincidence that the bust of Seneca was among the first installed. The ancient Roman philosopher and playwright, who believed that under a just ruler, a bearer of reason, monarchy could be a guarantee of the state’s prosperity, is credited with the expression “Only a wise man can be a king,” which Catherine II loved to repeat.
In the summer of 1790, when in Saint Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo the “terrible cannonade” of the Swedes threatening to capture the Russian capital was heard, and in Russia Radishchev’s book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” was “spreading the French contagion,” a bust of Achilles appeared on the gallery (as it was believed at the time; only later was it attributed as Ares) — the favorite hero of Alexander the Great, with whom Catherine II felt an inner kinship. Alexander — the “conqueror of the world” — was distinguished by reckless courage, hot temper, stubbornness, and boundless ambition. Courage, decisiveness, and ambition also defined the character of the Russian Empress.
In 1791, Catherine II commissioned a bust of Caesar — the great commander and pacifier of the Gauls. Believing that France, as a result of revolutionary events, could turn into a semi-wild country, the Empress predicted the emergence of a “new Caesar” who would bring sense to the “Gauls.” It was no coincidence that in the same year Cameron’s Gallery was decorated with busts of Hercules and Apollo, the conqueror of darkness, as well as portraits of “bearers of light” — philosophers, orators, poets, and writers.
Alongside “Minerva,” “Ajax,” and “Mercury,” models for which were taken from the Tsarskoye Selo Concert Hall, Catherine II personally approved for casting in bronze busts of great commanders and wise rulers who pacified peoples: Scipio Africanus, Germanicus, Septimius Severus, Marcus Aurelius, Vespasian, Titus. The Empress’s order was fulfilled in 1794. Two years earlier, the Academy of Arts reported that in accordance with the highest wish, busts of Mithridates, Vesta, Tiberius, Caracalla, and Brutus remained to be cast. However, the crowned patroness was in no hurry with this order and soon refused to repeat the portraits of the unsympathetic Tiberius and Caracalla, ordering busts of the Pontic king Mithridates and Brutus (a tribute to her longstanding republican sympathies). When, on January 21, 1793, after receiving news of the execution of the French king, Catherine II finally rejected the idea of universal brotherhood, uttering the words “Equality is a monster,” Brutus was expelled from Cameron’s Gallery. Finally, in June 1793, the Empress ordered a register of the “best busts” worthy of casting for installation on her colonnade to be sent for her selection and placed the bust of M. V. Lomonosov in her Pantheon. Thus, the collection of Catherine II’s bronze idols came to a logical conclusion.
Sources:
https://pushkin.spb.ru/encycl/parks/kameronova-gallerey.html
https://www.tzar.ru/objects/ekaterininskypark/cameron/camerongallery
