The Milkmaid of Tsarskoye Selo (also known as Girl with a pitcher) (Russian: Девушка с кувшином; other names: Milkwoman, Tsarskoye Selo Statue, Peretta) is a fountain in the Catherine Park of Tsarskoye Selo in St. Petersburg (designed by Augustin Betancourt, sculpted by Pavel Sokolov). It is a monument of garden and park architecture and sculpture from the early 19th century, of both federal and international importance.It is on the UNESCO list as a part of the museum-reserve, object 540-006 (Palace and park ensembles of the city of Pushkin).Retrospective inventory: maps. Government of St. Petersburg Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of Monuments of History and Culture. 26 December 2019. It became known as Tsarskoye Selo Statue. The sculpture has become a poetic symbol of the Tsarskoye Selo gardens. According to Vsevolod Petrov, senior researcher of the Painting Department of the Russian Museum, the sculpture represents the pinnacle of Pavel Sokolov's work and is among the most beautiful achievements of Russian garden sculpture.
Contemporaries assumed that the source of the plot for the sculpture was La Fontaine's fable The Milkmaid, or the Jug of Milk. Some researchers see in the sculpture a portrait of the wife of Emperor Alexander I, Elizabeth Alexeevna, and believe that the fountain is an allegory of her mourning for her daughters who died in infancy and her lover who died shortly before. The fountain inspired a large number of Russian cultural figures to create literary and musical works. Among them are the poems Tsarskoye Selo Statue by Alexander Pushkin and Anna Akhmatova, and the romance The Pushkin's Statue of Tsarskoye Selo by Caesar Cui.
The history of creation Originally, there was a spring in this place, which served as the source of the Wangazi brook. During the reign of Catherine I, a staircase made of Pudost stone led to it. An arch was built over a wooden channel, through which the water flowed, supported by columns made of the same stone. Victor Semyonov, an employee of the Tsarskoye Selo Museum, recreated the spring in a sketch-reconstruction as it looked at that time. In 1757, after the construction of the Rolling Hill nearby, the spring was hidden in a special chamber, from which water flowed to the pond through an underground conduit — a trough paved with cobblestones, with wooden walls and an overlap. A dam was built at the outlet of the conduit to the surface. A wide and long cobblestone canal led from it, serving as the only source of drinking water for laborers and horses at that time.
By 1809, in Tsarskoye Selo, the Taitsky water pipeline was already operating, supplying large quantities of water from the Izhora Plateau, so the utilitarian function of the spring disappeared.Vladimir Pavlov, Betancourt's biographer, dated the realisation of the project for the reconstruction of the Taitsky waterway to a later period, 1812-1814, and the creation of the project for the construction of the waterway to 1774. Between 1808 and 1810, during the improvement of the site of the former Rolling Hill, the garden master Johann Busch and architect Luigi Rusca transformed the slope between the Granite Terrace they created and the Big Pond into green ledges with paths down them.Фонтан «Девушка с кувшином». Государственный музей-заповедник Царское Село. 21 December 2019.
The engineer Augustin Betancourt was tasked with “decorating this space by the terrace where the key water is located”. His investigations revealed the presence of a limestone aquifer underground. The water-retaining layer was Cambrian clay beneath the limestone at a depth of 3–4 meters. The area's topography, with its downward slope to the Great Pond, explains why the spring remains active. Betancourt reconstructed the existing chamber protecting the spring, transforming it from a protection chamber into a dripping chamber by extending and cutting into the aquifer up to the water table. The chamber was constructed as a double-roofed spruce log cabin, covered with clay on three sides. Betancourt positioned it directly on the aquifer, placing the water line between the chamber and the canal in a cast iron pipe. The height difference of two meters between the chamber and the canal was sufficient to create a fountain.
The sculpture for the fountain was created by Pavel Sokolov, a representative of Russian classicism and an academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Betancourt's biographer, Professor Vladimir Pavlov, wrote that it was the sculptor who approached the Spanish engineer with a proposal to design the future fountain. According to Pavlov, Betancourt was responsible for the water supply and drainage, the installation of the pedestal and the stone descent to the base, as well as the selection of the location for the sculpture. The model for the sculpture was made of alabaster. The stone used as a pedestal was placed over the pipe that carried water from the dripping chamber to the canal. The stone itself was drilled, allowing water from the pipe to flow into the broken urn once the end of the pipe below the hole was plugged.
The fountain was launched in 1810 to coincide with the centenary of Tsarskoye Selo, but Sokolov did not have time to convert the sculpture into bronze by that date. On June 16, 1816, the caretaker of the Taitsky Waterworks of the Tsarskoye Selo Palace Board, Lieutenant Engineer Francis Canobbio, sent a letter mentioning a change in the fountain's appearance: “The newly built cascade with an alabaster figure in the upper Tsarskoye Selo garden is now in perfect order and is completely finished”. Semyonov interpreted this message as evidence of the installation of the bronze figure replacing the alabaster one, noting that in August of the same year, the sculptor was paid 3,000 rubles. From the same period, there is a record by Sokolov mentioning some “work on behalf of His Majesty”. According to other sources, the bronze sculpture appeared only in 1817.Dmitry Kuznetsov, Betancourt's biographer, dated the casting of the sculpture in bronze to 1810, although he immediately noted that it was installed in Catherine Park in 1816. It is known that the bronze statue was cast in the workshop of the Imperial Academy of Arts. The author's gypsum model of the statue is currently held in the State Russian Museum.Фонтан «Девушка с кувшином». Авторская гипсовая модель. Государственный музей-заповедник Царское Село. 21 December 2019. Lyudmila Doronina, in her two-volume history of Russian sculpture, wrote that Betancourt was delighted by Pavel Sokolov's sculpture. Especially for the Spanish engineer (and at his request), the sculptor created a marble copy.
Originally, the architectural composition of the fountain created by Betancourt included a grotto, which was removed in the mid-19th century.
Exterior of the fountain and surrounding landscape A barefoot girl in an antique tunic sits on a large gray stone, tucking her legs beneath her and lowering her left hand, which holds a shard of a broken jug. Her right hand supports her bowed head, with a strand of hair falling onto her neck. Her left shoulder and chest are bare. Next to the girl lies the broken jug, from which a continuous stream of spring water flows.
The chief gardener of the Tsarskoye Selo parks, Joseph Busch, integrated the fountain into the romantic landscape. The granite pedestal stands in an open space surrounded by trees. According to Semyonov, they create “an astonishing feeling of something majestic and at the same time mysterious”.
Fountain in 19th-21st centuries In 1830, Ilya Yakovkin, professor emeritus and rector of the Imperial Kazan University, wrote a detailed description of the fountain, mentioning that in winter, the figure of the girl is covered with a “plank cover”. The author admired the authenticity with which the sculptor conveyed her “sorrow,” “inner brokenness,” and the accuracy of “the size of the whole figure”.For a long time, the palace and park administration did not know the exact location from which the water flowed into the fountain. In 1877, when the jet from the jug began to disappear, it was discovered that there were no drawings of the water supply system. Special research work was entrusted to engineer Chernyavsky. He managed to identify and document the water supply system created by Betancourt. The system itself was deemed satisfactory, requiring only minor reconstruction: the rotten ceiling of the dripping chamber was replaced, the pipes were cleaned, and the clogging, which had caused difficulties with the water supply, was addressed. Semyonov suggested that it was around this time, due to the wide coverage of the repair work in the media, that a legend emerged claiming that the water from the fountain could cure bodily and cardiac ailments. The legend spread widely and even attracted the interest of specialists. A stone bollard was placed near the fountain, to which a mug was chained with an iron chain for the use of numerous pilgrims. Chemical analysis, conducted in 1910 by Dr. Gutovkin, revealed that the water from the fountain was of inferior quality compared to the tap water in Tsarskoye Selo, which came from the Orlovsky and Taitsky springs. It contained more bacteria and was harder.Фонтан «Девушка с кувшином» (Молочница). Лоцман путешествий. Клуб путешественников. 3 August 2016. At the end of the 19th century, a picket fence made of iron bars was built around the fountain, modeled after the wooden fencing used in parks at that time. The fence was planted with low greenery. In 1937, it was removed, and at the same time, the stone bollard that stood at the place where the water from the jug fell was also eliminated.
Before the German occupation during the World War II, the statue was buried and remained underground for three years, thus avoiding damage. Dmitry Kuznetsov found it symbolic that, near the place where the sculpture was buried, the headquarters of the 250th Blue Division of Spanish volunteers was located at the dacha of Countess Julia Samoilova on the Pavlovsky highway. After the city's liberation, the sculpture, dug out from its hiding place, was placed in the poet's room at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum (where it stood on an ordinary box draped with burlap), where a Pushkin corner was arranged. The broken vessel from the fountain, however, was lost. During the Great Patriotic War, the city's water supply system was destroyed, and the fountain, deprived of the sculpture, became the only source of drinking water for the residents of Tsarskoye Selo and its surroundings. In 1945, the sculpture was returned to its original location, and in 1947, the broken jug was recreated, from which water once again flowed. In 1951, the fountain was fully restored (and for some time after that, there was a fence around it).
In 1989, a new reconstruction of the fountain was carried out: the rotten timbers of the dripping chamber were replaced with reinforced concrete parts, cast iron pipes were replaced with plastic ones, and broken stones in the pavement were replaced with specially made stones according to the original drawings. A convenient water intake for tourists was also added in the granite wall. In 1990, a replica was created to replace the original bronze sculpture (see below).
In June 1992, the original Sokolov sculpture was displayed at the AmeriFlora-92 exhibition in Columbus, USA, dedicated to the 400th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. For this purpose, a special reservoir was dug, on the bank of which a large stone was placed. The statue with the jug was fixed on top, and the water was brought in.
Original and copies
Nowadays, the original statue is in the collections of the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve, while a copy, made in 1990 at the Monumentsculpture factory, stands in the park.Фонтан «Девушка с кувшином» («Молочница»). Пушкин.ру — сайт города Пушкин и Пушкинского района Санкт-Петербурга. 3 August 2016.