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Exhibition about St. Isaac’s Cathedral will be Open in "Sholokhov-Center"

December 13, 2019 in Rostov-on-Don, in the "Sholokhov-Center" of the Sholokhov Museum-Reserve the exhibition "St. Isaac's Cathedral. Three centuries in the heart of St. Petersburg” will be open. It tells about the construction history of one of the main symbols of the city on the Neva. The exhibition is presented by the State Museum-Monument "St. Isaac's Cathedral."

Among the many historical monuments of St. Petersburg, one of the most prominent is St. Isaac's Cathedral. On July 26, 2019, the church, consecrated in the name of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, the heavenly patron saint of Emperor Peter I, celebrated the 200th anniversary of its solemn laying on the design of Auguste Montferrand.

The construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral marked the rise of engineering and technical thought and the heyday of domestic monumental art in Russia in the first half - mid-19th century. Exhibition "St. Isaac's Cathedral. Three centuries in the heart of St. Petersburg” will show its development from the grandiose Imperial Church of the 19th century and the Anti-Religious Museum in the first third of the 20th century to an outstanding monument of world architecture and one of the most famous and visited museums in Russia.

The exposition will acquaint visitors with the complex and amazing history of the cathedral construction that occupied about half a million people working for forty years under the leadership of the French architect O. Montferrand. The exhibition will present original drawings and sketches made by the master, unfulfilled projects of the cathedral and lithographs, showing the laborious and sometimes incredible construction process.

Under the arches of the temple is an unparalleled collection of monumental religious painting of the mid of 19th century. Its authors are the best masters of the academic school - K.P. Bryullov, P.A. Basin, F.A. Bruni, V.K. Shebunev. The visitors of the “Sholokhov-Center” will view genuine sketches of artists for murals, drawings by Karl Bryullov and fragments of the ornamental decoration of the cathedral. Among the undoubted masterpieces of the exhibition there will be also works by the favorite of the imperial family, the court artist T.A. Neffa.

The efforts to preserve its unique interior and exterior decoration were not less important than the erection of the cathedral. During the Second World War not only the cathedral survived, but it also became a reliable defense for valuable collections of other museums and palaces. Part of the exhibition will tell about the history of the restoration of the cathedral and the best restorers, who for almost two decades worked to restore the monument to its original appearance.

In addition to genuine masterpieces of art, the exhibition will present a unique object reminiscent of the period in the history of the cathedral when the anti-religious museum was created in it. Then the main exhibit was the world's largest Foucault’s pendulum, demonstrating the rotation of the Earth around its axis. It was suspended in the lantern of the main dome in 1931 and removed only in 1986. Rostov-on-Don will be the first place where the pendulum will be exported for the first time in the history of its existence in the cathedral.

As part of the socio-cultural program developed by the museum-monument, visually impaired visitors will be able to get acquainted with the architectural and artistic decoration of the cathedral due to specially adapted exhibits presented at the exhibition.

In the attic of the “Sholokhov-Center” you can see the works of St. Petersburg photographers Alexander Minin, Stanislav Chabutkin, Evgeny Gorokh and Evgeny Mokhorev. The photos tell about the painstaking work of restorers who preserve the beauty of the temples and monuments for future generations. A special part of the exhibition is panoramic photographs of St. Petersburg taken from the balustrade of St. Isaac's Cathedral, which help to look from a completely different angle not only on St. Isaac's Cathedral, but also on St. Petersburg at the beginning of the third millennium.

The unique exhibition “St. Isaac's Cathedral. Three centuries in the heart of St. Petersburg” will be available to visit from December 14, 2019 to February 23, 2020 at the “Sholokhov-Center” of the National Sholokhov Museum-Reserve at the address: Rostov-on-Don, Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, 125/69, tel.: +7 (863) 210-90-17.