The short life and unhappy love of Princess Tatyana Yusupova: How the marble "Angel" appeared in Arkhangelsk near Moscow

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The history of the marble "Angel" that adorns the quiet church garden in the Arkhangelskoye estate near Moscow began in the nineties of the 19th century, when the sculptor received an order and set to work. Or even earlier - when the girl was still alive, whose short biography served as a source of inspiration for the master. Tatiana Yusupova from birth was surrounded by love, very rich, brought up among connoisseurs of art. Still, it is impossible not to regret her: the life of one of the most enviable Russian brides was filled with sadness.

Tatiana Nikolaevna Yusupova

The sculptor Mark Matveyevich Antokolsky began work on this work at the end of 1892, by that time Princess Yusupova, in whose memory the statue was created, had been buried in her grave for four years. Photos of her were forwarded to the Parisian workshop, and also a description of the place where the sculpture was supposed to be placed: the whole composition was important, and not just the tombstone. In 1899, the monument was erected - on a hill whose slope ran down to the oxbow of the Moskva River, at the southern wall of the manor church, in the estate where this young girl loved to spend time and where she died suddenly at the age of twenty-two, having lived a sad but a life full of hope.

In her short biography, you can see a lot of almost literary parallels, one of them is the resemblance to Pushkin's Tatyana, who confessed her love and only met the cold. But unlike the heroine of Eugene Onegin, Tatyana Yusupova was not the daughter of an ordinary provincial landowner, but a nobleman from among the richest in the Russian Empire, the heir to the entire huge fortune of the Yusupov family, Prince Nikolai Borisovich.

Tatyana, or Tanyok, as she was called in the family, was the youngest of two daughters. Parents, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Ribopier and Nikolai Yusupov, fought for the right to be together for a long time - they were cousins, and the church forbade such a union. Yusupov's mother was also against the desire of the young to get married. After rumors spread about an attempt to escape, Nikolai was arrested by the highest order and sent to the Caucasus for some time.

But the young people found support in the person of the bride's father, Count Ribopier, and immediately after the coronation of Alexander II, he obtained permission from the new emperor to marry. On September 26, 1856, Nikolai and Tatiana got married and soon left abroad. The newly made Princess Yusupova shone at the court of Napoleon III, and after returning to St. Petersburg, she became an adornment of the Russian capital society. The firstborn of the couple, daughter Zinaida, was born in 1861. Two years later, her brother Boris was born, but he did not live long, only two months. The princess was going through the death of the child hard, and in order to improve her health, the family left for Europe.

Prince Yusupov bought a villa on Lake Leman, it was named "Tatiania". Tatyana Nikolaevna Yusupova was born there in 1866.

Both princesses received excellent education. Yusupov, himself a collector, music lover and artist, also brought up a sense of beauty in his daughters, from childhood they were surrounded by objects of art and people of art. And besides, the prince spent a lot of money on charity - after his death, this activity will be continued by his eldest daughter.

Collections of precious stones, musical instruments, paintings, books were kept in the Yusupovs' palace on the Moika. When the Yusupovs brought a photographic apparatus from Europe, they also developed a new hobby - photography.

Tatiana and Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich

The health of Tatiana Alexandrovna, mother of Zinaida and Tatiana, continued to deteriorate. She died in 1879 - her youngest daughter was thirteen at the time. The death of her mother was a tragedy for the girl. Tatyana was very sad, not knowing how to fill the void in her soul. She developed a particularly close relationship with the Empress Maria Alexandrovna and the two Grand Dukes, Sergei and Pavel.

Tatiana was in love with Pavel Alexandrovich, Paul, the youngest son of the emperor, from early youth. As it should be for any girl, she trusted her feelings only to her diary and her closest friends. The princess attended balls, where she caught the eye of her Onegin, wrote poetry. Perhaps Tatyana confessed her feelings to Pavel, like the Pushkin heroine, because the long-standing friendship between them suddenly ceased, Paul began to avoid the princess, which she wrote with bitterness in her diary.

Zinaida, the eldest, meanwhile, shone in the light. Beautiful, intelligent, kind and artistic, the eldest of Yusupov's daughters received a marriage proposal from the Bulgarian prince, but preferred another one to him - Count Felix Sumarokov-Elston. The father was dissatisfied with the fact that his daughter was missing the opportunity to receive the title of princess, and for a long time did not give his consent to the marriage - as he himself was once prevented from doing so. In 1882, Zinaida - Zaide, as her younger sister called her - nevertheless became Sumarokov's wife, and he, at the behest of her father, became the heir to the title and surname and coat of arms of the Yusupovs: the old prince Nikolai Borisovich was the last of the representatives of the family in the male line. The young couple settled in the Arkhangelsk, near Moscow estate of the Yusupovs.

The elder sister's marriage was quite successful, but the younger, also a beauty and an enviable bride, was in no hurry to get married. Tatiana, of course, dreamed of her wedding with the Grand Duke, but alas, the news came that he would be engaged to another. The Greek princess Alexandra, his cousin, was intended for Paul's wife. "", - written in the princess's diary. A long story of unhappy love did not work out. In June 1888, Tatyana died, she died suddenly, in three days, which, of course, spread rumors - typhus was named as the cause. Two telegrams were sent one after the other to Berlin, where my father lived then.

After the death of Tatyana Yusupova

A few years later, having already buried her father, Zinaida ordered a monument for the grave of her younger sister. Having become one of the richest heiresses of her era, Princess Yusupova continued to engage in charity work, even while in exile in Paris: unlike many Russian aristocrats, she managed to export part of her fortune abroad. She died in 1939. The princess's son, Felix, in December 1916, became one of the participants in the murder of Rasputin, which was committed in the Yusupov palace on the Moika. Later, in France, he wrote his memoirs, but did not mention his aunt in them.

Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich, about whose wedding Tatyana thought with fear or with hope, married on June 17, 1889. The marriage was very short - two years later the Grand Duchess died after giving birth from eclampsia. By a strange coincidence, she lived almost as long as Tatyana Yusupova. The Grand Duke himself died in 1919 - he was shot in the Peter and Paul Fortress along with other members of the imperial family. It was said that the Yusupovs were the victims of a curse: allegedly, Tsarevich Alexei, the son of Peter I, punished those who contributed to his fall and death in this way: either a traitor or the unfortunate son of a despotic father, betrayed by his mistress.