Count Gregory Orlov and his four brothers orchestrated the coup that dethroned Peter III and brought Catherine to power. She never forgot this, and generously rewarded the brothers with lavish gifts and titles. Alexei would be named admiral of Russia’s naval fleet, Feodor was decorated during the first Russo-Turkish War, and Vladimir appointed president of the Academy of Sciences. To Gregory Orlov, who wore her diamond-studded portrait around his neck, Catherine expressed her passion in letters: “My angel, my lord, my inestimable little Grigory with honeyed lips, my falcon, my golden pheasant.”
To show off her handsome lover, Catherine hosted a jousting tournament in the summer of 1766 in the meadow facing the Winter Palace. Crowds gathered on the rooftops and in the square in front of the Palace, where a wooden amphitheater was erected for spectators. Catherine headed the Slavic team, while Alexei and Gregory Orlov headed the Turkish and Indian teams, respectively. Each had over one hundred cavalry and infantry along with knights on horseback, ladies in chariots, and musicians. As part of the tourney, galloping knights beheaded dummies representing Moors while both men and women hurled spears. Catherine personally awarded gold medals and jewels to those with the best historical costumes.
Increasingly, Catherine and Orlov spent time together thirty miles southwest of St. Petersburg at Gatchina. Named for the village of Khotchino, captured by the Swedes in the early 17th century, the wooded property was one of Catherine’s many extravagant gifts to her lover. After gaining the forested land for Russia during the Northern War, Peter the Great had given it to his sister, Natalia Alexeyevna. After the tsarevna’s death, Gatchina grange had a succession of owners until it was bought by Catherine from relatives of diplomat Prince Boris Kurakin, Peter’s well-educated brother-in-law.
To design Orlov’s new lakeside estate, Catherine hired Antonio Rinaldi, fresh from the Chinese Palace at Oranienbaum. Inspired by the castles he’d seen in England, Rinaldi combined elements of a fortified medieval knight’s castle, a royal hunting lodge, and a stately English home. Breaking ground in 1766, Rinaldi chose the highest part of a hill overlooking the south side of the mirror-like White Lake. The three-story central block was adorned with coupled Doric and Ionic pilasters and flanked by a pair of octagonal towers and semicircular wings. To tie the monumental estate to its natural surroundings, Rinaldi created an open passageway with arcades on both fronts of the central building.
In a departure from the traditional stuccoed brick façade, Rinaldi faced the residence with a weathered, yellow-hued limestone from the nearby Pudost River. Inside, Rinaldi combined rococo with the emerging Classicism. This transitional style is best seen in the large White Hall, where restrained geometric pilasters and frames contrast with rococo curls, acanthus leaves, sea shells, and scrolling parquetry floors. In a nod to his talented architect, Orlov hung Shubin’s bas-relief of Rinaldi in the room connecting the White Hall and Antechamber.
During Gatchina’s construction, Catherine often stayed with Orlov for days, passing the time boating on the lake, strolling the grounds, and playing cards. Catherine took an active interest in the project, involving herself in details of its construction and interiors. Rinaldi updated Catherine with letters. “Just the third day as I came back from Gatchina, where I was for the second time, and where I spent six days,” he wrote in June 1767. “Already started erection of the house from solid stone with solution and placing of gratings of the cellars.” But Orlov was unhappy with the slow pace of the project. In September, Catherine wrote state secretary Ivan Chernishov about his impatience. “The landlord of Gatchina is sad that even the ground floor of his house this summer hasn’t been finished yet.”1
In 1769, Catherine recruited British landscaper Charles Sparrow to improve the natural beauty of the surrounding park—a project in which she was personally involved. An avid hunter, Orlov envisioned Gatchina as a hunting estate. A large section in the park’s northern region was established as a game reserve for deer, wild goats, and hares. The woods were divided into squares, with large areas cleared to provide a good view in all directions; trees and shrubs were planted around the natural contour of White Lake.
In 1765, possibly to mark Orlov’s appointment as General of the Artillery in charge of armory, Catherine ordered a breakfast and toilet service from the Imperial Porcelain Factory that combined baroque, rococo, and neoclassical motifs. The toilet service included a mirror in a porcelain frame and essentials—from dental tools to shaving accessories. Painter-decorator Nasar Koslov and miniaturist Andrei Cherny collaborated on the breakfast service, creating painted military scenes, trophies, emblems, and motifs. Each piece sported Orlov’s monogram “GGO” in gold Cyrillic letters topped with a count’s coronet. Even the fluted coffee spoons and other utensils featured small oval medallions with the count’s initials.
Some pieces of the Orlov Service were rimmed in gold by virtuoso goldsmith-jeweler Jean Pierre Ador. Born in Berne, Switzerland, Ador spent nine years in London before returning to Geneva, a center for enamel, clock making, and watchmaking. Like many goldsmiths, Ador was lured to Russia by Catherine’s deep pockets. Early in her reign, Ador set up a workshop in St. Petersburg, working primarily for her court. In his ten-year contract with the Imperial Chancellery, Ador agreed to not use anything less than eighteen-carat gold (for which he would pay the taxes). In 1768, Catherine commissioned him to create another gift for Gregory Orlov.
Considered one of Ador’s masterpieces, the eleven-inch, tulip-shaped Vase with Classical Figures was capped with a perforated cover to allow fragrance to permeate the air. Swags of leaves, chiseled in olive-green gold, surround scroll cartouches set with painted oval medallions of Flora and Ceres, representing spring and summer. Beneath the lion’s head–shaped handles are enamel scenes: Hercules killing the Nemean lion and a lion attacking 6th century B.C. Greek athlete Milo of Croton. Topping it all off is a pair of reclining gold putti on green-gold clouds, representing friendship between lovers. The cherubs support an oval shield with Gregory Orlov’s monogram G.O. in gold Cyrillic letters on a royal blue enamel background.
Catherine’s largesse continued. In 1768, she again tapped Rinaldi to build Orlov a city residence with one of the best addresses in St. Petersburg. The Marble Palace was situated at the end of the Palace Embankment facing the Citadel, with one wing running along the Neva River and the other along “Millionaire’s Row.” Catherine instructed her architect to use newly discovered marble from the Urals and Siberia over 1,000 miles away, along with marble from Greece and Italy. A row of polished pink-veined flat marble pilasters topped with blue-gray Siberian marble created a striking contrast to the gray granite background. Across the palace’s façade faced with pink, white, and blue-gray marble, Catherine penned the inscription: “In grateful friendship.”
To please his patroness, Rinaldi toned down his signature baroque and rococo styles in favor of neoclassicism. Unlike the private Chinese Palace and Gatchina, the Marble Palace was intended to impress the public. Rinaldi lessened the severe effect of the two-story pilastered building with a series of window niches in the center of each main façade. The entrance featured a clock tower with a broken pediment described by architectural historian George Heard Hamilton as “a last baroque intrusion in a design which was settling into the soberer mood of Neo-Classicism.”2
Inside, Rinaldi chose a rich color palette, facing the first floor with pink and the second and third floors with light gray stone. Inside the veined blue-gray marble Entrance Hall, Rinaldi installed a series of arches and groups of martial trophies in relief by two of Russia’s finest sculptors—Fedot Shubin and Michael Kozlovsky. The blue-gray marble continued in the spectacular grand staircase adorned with a pair of Shubin statues personifying Morning and Night. Lapis lazuli and precious marble from the Urals lined the walls of the first floor ballroom, considered among the most opulent and elegant of all Russian neoclassical interiors.
Upstairs in the Great Hall, Rinaldi used more lapis lazuli along with green, yellow, and gray marble, and pink marble pilasters. The Hall featured an enormous ceiling painting and two large classical reliefs in white marble. To complete the palace’s interiors, Catherine transferred paintings from the Hermitage, including Carle van Loo’s Self-Portrait; François Lemoyne’s Woman Bathing and Jupiter and Io; Jean-Baptiste Pater’s triptych, Dance Beneath the Trees; and a series of women’s heads by Pietro Antonio Rotari. A drawings album showing the palace art includes a pair of landscapes by Dutch painter and printmaker Abraham Bloemaert. Following Catherine’s lead, Gregory Orlov created a portrait gallery at Gatchina in 1778, along with galleries for paintings, sculpture and antiquities, a kunstkammer, and an arsenal.
The Marble Palace achieved the desired “wow” effect. William Coxe described the “superb edifice” in glowing terms: “The front is composed of polished granite and marble, and finished with such nicety, and in a style so superior to the contiguous buildings, that it has the appearance of having been transported to its present spot, like the palace in the Arabian Tales, raised by the enchantment of Aladdin’s lamp. It contains forty rooms on each floor, and is fitted in a style of such profusion and splendor, that the expense of the furniture has exceeded 200,000 pounds.”3 Swiss mathematician Jean Bernoulli raved: “I saw a beautiful palace which the Empress is building for Prince Orlov and which is nearly ready. It is embellished with marble doors and window cornices, statues etcetera. The walls of the staircase are faced with marble panels. It’s absolutely the most beautiful palace in St. Petersburg and, although smaller, surpasses even that of the Tsar.”4
Gregory Orlov tried to please the brainy Catherine. He studied French and tried unsuccessfully to invite the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Gatchina where “the air is pure, the water extraordinary, and pleasant spots for walking are propitious for thought.”5 Orlov spent hours searching the night sky with his telescope at his rooftop observatory at Gatchina. He conducted simple science experiments, describing to Catherine how a glass filled with water would crack after it freezes. Despite these efforts, Orlov remained a good-natured soldier at heart; his highest appointment was chief of the artillery. French envoy Louis de Breteuil wrote Catherine’s nemesis, the Duc de Choiseul, that Orlov was “very handsome, but . . . very stupid.” And after meeting Orlov in Paris, Denis Diderot likened him to “a boiler always boiling but never cooking anything.”6
What Orlov wanted more than anything was to co-rule Russia with Catherine. But marriage would risk Catherine’s political power. Though she felt increasingly estranged from her son Paul, whose militaristic bent eerily resembled that of her late husband, his existence legitimized her rule. As adviser Nikita Panin told her bluntly, “A Madame Orlov could never be empress of Russia.”7 Before Gatchina and the Marble Palace were finished, cracks began appearing in their relationship.