NATASHA

abroad. Information about Peter Sheremetev's foreign purchases between 1770 and 1788 has been preserved in the archives. He bought from foreign merchants in St Petersburg, or through agents especially commissioned to import goods for him. Clothes, jewels and fabrics came directly from Paris, usually from the tailor to Versailles; wines came from Bordeaux. Chocolate, tobacco, groceries, coffee, sweets and dairy products came from Amsterdam; beer, dogs and carriages from England. Here is one of Sheremetev's shopping lists:

kaftan of downy material

camisole sewn with gold and pearls

kaftan and trousers made of silk in puce plus yellow camisole

kaftan made of red cotton with blue on both sides

blue silk camisole sewn with gold

kaftan and trousers in fabric with camisole in raspberry silk sewn

with gold and silver kaftan and trousers in chocolate colour with green velour camisole black velvet frock coat tails in black velvet with speckles tails with 24 silver buttons 2 pique camisoles sewn with gold and silver 7 arshins* of French silk for camisoles 24 pairs of lace cuffs for nightshirts

12 arshins of black material for trousers and 3 arsbins of black velvet various ribbons

150 pounds of superior tobacco 60 pounds of ordinary tobacco 36 tins of pomade 6 dozen bottles of capillary syrup golden snuffbox 2 barrels of lentils 2 pounds of vanilla 60 pounds of truffles in oil 200 pounds of Italian macaroni 240 pounds of parmesan 150 bottles of anchovies 12 pounds of coffee from Martinique 24 pounds of black pepper 20 pounds of white pepper 6 pounds of cardamom 80 pounds of raisins 160 pounds of currants 12 bottles of English dry mustard various kinds of ham and bacon, sausages

* One arshin is 71 centimetres.

moulds for blancmange

600 bottles of white burgundy

600 bottles of red burgundy

200 bottles of sparkling champagne

100 bottles of non-sparkling champagne

100 bottles of pink champagne.⁴⁶

If Boris Sheremetev was the last of the old boyars, his son Pyotr was perhaps the first, and certainly the grandest, of Russia's European gentlemen. Nothing demonstrated more clearly that a nobleman had made the transition from Muscovite boyar to Russian aristocrat than the construction of a palace in the European style. Under its grand roof the palace brought together all the European arts. With its salon and its ballroom, it was like a theatre for members of the aristocracy to play out their airs and graces and European ways. But it was not just a building or a social space. The palace was conceived as a civilizing force. It was an oasis of European culture in the desert of the Russian peasant soil, and its architecture, its paintings and its books, its serf orchestras and operas, its landscaped parks and model farms, were meant to serve as a means of public enlightenment. In this sense the palace was a reflection of Petersburg itself.

Fountain House, like Russia, was originally made of wood, a single-storey dacha hurriedly erected by Boris Sheremetev in his final years. Pyotr rebuilt and enlarged the house in stone during the 1740s - the beginning of the craze for palace building in St Petersburg, after the Empress Elizabeth had ordered the construction of her own great Imperial residences there: the Summer Palace on the Fontanka river (1741-4), the Great Palace at Tsarskoe Selo (1749-52), and the Winter Palace (1754-62) which we know today. All these baroque masterpieces were built by the Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli, who had come to Russia at the age of sixteen. Rastrelli perfected the synthesis of the Italian and Russian baroque styles which is so characteristic of St Petersburg. That essential style - distinguished from its European counterparts by the vastness of its scale, the exuberance of its forms and the boldness of its colours - was stamped on the Fountain House, which may have been designed by Rastrelli himself; certainly the building work was overseen by Rastrelli's main assistant at

Tsarskoe Selo, Savva Chevakinsky, a minor nobleman from Tver who had graduated from the Naval School to become Russia's first architect of note. The classical facade was ornately decorated with lion masks and martial emblems trumpeting the glories of the Sheremetev clan, and this theme was continued on the iron railings and the gates. Behind the palace were extensive gardens, reminiscent of those at Tsarskoe Selo, with paths lined by marble statues from Italy, an English grotto, a Chinese pavilion, and, with a more playful touch, fountains to reflect the house's name.⁴⁷

Inside, the house was a typical collection of European sculpture, bas-relief, furniture and decor, reflecting a taste for expensive luxury. Wallpaper (from France) was just coming into fashion and was used, it seems, for the first time in Russia at the Fountain House.⁴⁸ Pyotr Sheremetev was a follower of fashion who had the house redecorated almost every year. On the upper floor was a grand reception hall, used for balls and concerts, with a parquet floor and a high painted ceiling, lined on one side by full-length windows that looked on to the water and, on the other, by enormous mirrors with gold-leaf candelabras whose wondrous effect was to flood the room with extraordinary light. There was a chapel with valuable icons in a special wing; a parade gallery on the upper floor; a museum of curiosities; a library of nearly 20,000 books, most of them in French; a gallery of family and royal portraits painted by serf artists; and a collection of European paintings, which the Sheremetevs purchased by the score. The galleries contained works by Raphael, Van Dyck, Correggio, Veronese, Vernet and Rembrandt. Today they are found in the Hermitage of the Winter Palace.⁴⁹

Not content with one palace, the Sheremetevs built two more, even more expensive ones, at Kuskovo and at Ostankino, on the western outskirts of Moscow. The Kuskovo estate, to the south of Moscow, though it had a relatively simple wooden house which gave the place a rural feel, was extraordinarily ambitious in its conception. In front of the house there was a man-made lake, large enough to stage mock sea battles watched by up to 50,000 guests; a hermitage that housed several hundred paintings; pavilions and grottoes; an open amphitheatre for the summer season; and a larger inside theatre (the most advanced in Russia when it was constructed in the 1780s) with a seating capacity of 150 people and a stage deep enough for the scene

3. The Sheremetev theatre at Ostankino. View from the stage. The parterre is covered by the floor, which was used for balls

changes of French grand opera.⁵⁰ Nikolai Petrovich, who took the Sheremetev opera to its highest levels, had the theatre rebuilt at Ostankino after the auditorium at Kuskovo burnt down in 1789. The Ostankino theatre was even larger than the Kuskovo one, with a seating capacity of 260 people. Its technical facilities were much more sophisticated than those at Kuskovo; it had a specially designed contraption that could transform the theatre into a ballroom by covering the parterre with a floor.

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The civilization of the aristocracy was based upon the craftsmanship of millions of serfs. What Russia lacked in technology, it more than made up for in a limitless supply of cheap labour. Many of the things that make the tourist gasp at the splendour and the beauty of the Winter Palace - the endless parquet flooring and abundance of gold leaf, the ornate carpentry and bas-relief, the needlework with thread

finer than a human hair, the miniature boxes with their scenes from fairy tales set in precious stones, or the intricate mosaics in malachite - are the fruits of many years of unacknowledged labour by unknown serf artists.

Serfs were essential to the Sheremetev palaces and their arts. From the 200,000 census serfs the Sheremetevs owned, several hundred were selected every year and trained as artists, architects and sculptors, furniture makers, decorative painters, gilders, engravers, horticul-turalists, theatrical technicians, actors, singers and musicians. Many of these serfs were sent abroad or assigned to the court to learn their craft. But where skill was lacking, much could be achieved through sheer numbers. At Kuskovo there was a horn band in which, to save time on the training of players, each musician was taught to play just one note. The number of players depended on the number of different notes in a tune; their sole skill lay in playing their note at the appropriate moment.⁵¹