Monday, August 17, 2015

St.Petersburg Trip: Mosaics in St.Isaac's Cathedral

I just came back from a short trip to Russia and a few Baltic Cost countries.  The trip was wonderful, the weather was great, and brought back lots of precious memories and beautiful pictures.  I do not want to overwhelm my readers with too many pictures, but some of them I just have to share.

Here are a few pictures I took inside St.Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg (Russia).  The cathedral itself is absolutely magnificent both from the outside and inside.  Here is a link to a wikipedia article about this cathedral: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Isaac's_Cathedral

There are a few pictures of the cathedral in this article, and many more can be found on-line.

What I want to share here are the pictures taken by a polymer clay artist.  You know, polymer clay is an obsession, and a polymer clay artist simply cannot help but notice things that relate to polymer clay in one way or another.  In my case, I was stunned by the mosaics in this cathedral. 

Built in early 19-th century, St.Isaac's was originally decorated by many masterful paintings by the famous Russian painters of that time.  In a few short years that paintings started to deteriorate due to the harsh weather in St. Petersburg.   A decision was made to replace each painting with an identical mosaic.  To say that this work is very tedious and painstaking is a huge understatement.  The mosaics that were completed are so detailed, they can be easily mistaken for oil paintings even from a few feet away (and especially when they are up at the cathedral ceiling).  Luckily, there were a couple of these mosaics on display at the floor level, so I was able to take these pictures.






 

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