Madame Korshunova

This is one of the most beautiful books - perhaps the most beautiful - that I have ever seen. I bought it for $40 (its worth $250) because it didn't have a jacket and eventually I sold it for $40 to someone who desperately wanted to own it.

The book, commissioned by Tsar Nicholas, is as much fine-art as faithful renderings of the architecture, furnishings and decoration of each of the many rooms of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. It is very large format and each plate - protected by a tissue leaf - was originally painted in watercolours with tiny sable brushes. I think that this is probably one of the most extraordinary books ever published, certainly I have never seen such amazing reproductions of paintings: the colours are of every shade and glowingly brilliant, and even with a magnifying glass the extraordinary details remained sharp.

My favourite plate was of the Blue Bedroom. It was vast, the curtained four-poster bed was dwarfed by the size of the room, and had a matching dressing room and was a very, very long way from the service areas of the Palace. Imagine the Tsarina having breakfast in bed and fancying a leetle more bacon, or perhaps the egg wasn't hard enough .... by the time the maid got back from a trip to the kitchen the toast would be cold and the coffee all skinned over. Ah, the problems of the very wealthy and privileged ;-)

2 May 2011… (meer)