Sculptor Lilia Shvetskaya:
I rebuild all that was destroyed…

by Natalia G. Korshunova, Head of Scientific Literature and Bibliography Department

Booklet
Historical Illustration Art Publishers
St Petersburg, 2010
Number of printed copies: 500
Language: Russian

Where to Buy

To commemorate the 65th anniversary of Russia’s victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, the State Museum Tsarskoye Selo issued this booklet dedicated to Lilia M. Shvetskaya, a great artist, restorer and person, one of the legendary re-creators of the monuments in war-stricken Leningrad.

The crowning work of her life was the re-creation of the gilded woodcarvings of the Golden Enfilade in the Catherine Palace, for which she sculpted numerous figure samples of nymphs, cupids, shepherdess heads, birds, flowers, rosettes and other details of Rastrelli’s intricate wall ornaments. Shvetskaya unraveled the 18th-century masters’ secret of complex dimensional compositions and reproduced it in her works.

She devoted 20 years of her life to the rebirth of the Amber Room. Her heads of beauties of various nations of the world, among which the African and Asian ones stand out, became the true masterpieces of restoration work. 

A high class professional, Shvetskaya works brilliantly with classic sculptures in the palace interiors and reproduces lost articles in the Catherine and Alexander Parks, giving new life to art pieces from the past.