The month of March, considered Women's History Month, is coming to an end. And in honor of him here is such a selection. 10 of the many revolutionary women artists who have made the world a more beautiful place, and more equal for half of humanity, with their art.

These are female artists who embodied the idea of ​​feminist art long before the term was coined. Whether they were in art during the Italian Renaissance or in 19th century New York, their work proves that women are always able to make a significant contribution to the art world.
On the first reproduction Portrait of Alice Liddell by Cameron

1. Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron (Julia Margaret Cameron) was 48 years old when she first got a camera. It was back in the century before last, back in 1868. But in the short 11 years of her career as a photographer, Julia has achieved a lot.

Her dreamy portraits seem to deliberately revel in photographic imperfections, using blurs and fog to conjure viewers with a clear human essence over mimetic (Greek mimetes - imitator) likeness. I think that if anyone on this list would be liked by Instagram, it would be Cameron.

2. Propercia de Rossi

Properzia de Rossi (1491-1530) was born in Bologna and worked there all her life.

Probably she wasPThe first woman who destroyed the stereotypes of Renaissance society. Bolognese artist and sculptor, who, without looking back at the past and present, was engaged in a truly masculine occupation - stone carving, marble processing and engraving.

As a girl, she began her journey with the carving of peach pits, which seemed to be an amazing miracle in terms of the subtlety of work and graceful manner.
On such a tiny bone, Rossi managed to convey all the passions of Christ, made with the most beautiful carvings with countless characters.

3. Elisabetta Sirani

Born in 1638. Though she died at the young age of 27, Sirani created over 200 paintings during her lifetime, combining dramatic dark backgrounds with sharp, vibrant colors and images of powerful heroines.

Daughter of the artist of the Bologna school Giovanni Andrea Sirani, one of the closest students and collaborators of Guido Reni.She began painting at the age of 12 under the influence of the connoisseur and art historian Carlo Cesare Malvasia, who later included her biography - the only woman - in his famous book on the artists of Bologna (1678).

At first, the father was skeptical about these activities, but a year later he accepted his daughter into the workshop. By the age of 17, she became a well-established painter and engraver, from that time she kept a notebook in which she wrote down all her works.

Her manner is close to Guido Reni, their works were confused several times: so the famous alleged portrait of Beatrice Cenci by Sirani was attributed to Reni for a long time.

4. Edmonia Lewis

Afro-Indian American woman sculptor

Born in Albany in 1844. His father is African American, his mother is from the Chippewa Indian tribe. Both parents died when she was a child. Edmonia, along with her older brother, lived in a family of relatives of her mother in Niagara Floss. Three years later, her brother suggested that she give up working at home and go to school.

She studied at Oberlin Preparatory College in Ohio, one of the first educational institutions in the United States to admit women of various races. It was there that Edmonia became interested in sculpture and began her career in art.

However, she faced discrimination throughout her education - in​​ including she was beaten and accused of poisoning a classmatein. After graduating, she moved to Boston to continue her work of recreating abolitionists and civil war heroes.

She eventually spent most of her artistic career in Rome, where she created beautiful marble sculptures in the neoclassical tradition. Best known for the marble sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra, and we can see why. The form has all the drama of Michelangelo.

5. Judith Leyster

Born in 1609 in Haarlem, the Netherlands, she became the first female artist registered with the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke.
She is best known for her "Self-Portrait". Known for her playful fluidity, at a time when most female portraits were hard and serious.

6. Sofonisba Anguissola

Born in 1532.
Anguissola, the eldest of seven children, is of noble birth, and her father assured her that she would have the best education in whatever field she chose.

He apparently was a man of his word, and Michelangelo became Anguissola's unofficial mentor. She was given great opportunities because of her wealth and status, but she was still denied many opportunities as an artist because she was a woman.
For example, because it was considered inappropriate for a woman to look at nude models.

In the last years of her life, Anguissola painted not only portraits, but also canvases on religious themes, as in the days of her youth. However, many of her paintings were subsequently lost.
Her husband's successful trade and a generous pension from Philip II allowed her to paint freely and live comfortably. She was a leading portrait painter in Genoa until she moved to Palermo in her later years. In 1620 she created her last self-portrait.

7. Saint Catherine of Bologna

Born in 1413 An artist, a nun and, you guessed it, a saint. She grew up well trained in drawing, and educated as the daughter of an aristocrat, she served as a lady-in-waiting before entering a convent.
Now she is considered the patroness of artists.
Many artists came to visit her to study and share their opinions on the directions in the development of art.
She created her own style, which many artists sought to emulate.
Her success paved the way for other Renaissance women as artists, such as Lavinia Fontana, Barbara Longhi, Fede Galizia and Artemisia Gentileschi.

8. Levina Teerlink

She was born in 1593.
Gentileschi, the artist's daughter, grew up in her father's workshop as a child.
At 18 she was raped by an artist Agostino Tassi, working with her father, and was subjected to interrogation, humiliation and even torture, wanting to secure the conviction of the criminal.

After a torturous seven-month trial for Artemisia, Tassi was found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison.

Having married the artist Pierantonio Stiattesi (her father arranged the marriage), Artemisia moved to Florence in the same 1612.

Gentileschi's feminist work is filled with heroic women. Her aesthetic is equally bold and strong, eschewing traditional notions of female weakness.
Often her canvases combine sexuality and violence, for example, Judith kills Holofernes.

At the beginning of the 19th century, in the Empire era, naturalness and simplicity were in fashion. Even the ladies tried to achieve a cosmetic effect in natural ways: if pallor was required, they drank vinegar, if blush, they ate strawberries. For a while, even jewelry goes out of fashion. It is believed that the more beautiful a woman is, the less she needs jewelry ...

The whiteness and tenderness of the hands during the Empire were so valued that they even put on gloves at night.

In the outfits, imitation of antique clothes is noticeable. Since these dresses were made mainly from thin translucent muslin, fashionistas risked catching a cold on especially cold days.

Madame Recamier - the famous Parisian beauty, the most famous mistress of the literary salon in history

"Portrait of Madame Recamier" is a painting by the French artist Jacques Louis David, painted in 1800.

To create spectacular draperies that beautifully depict natural data, the ladies used a simple trick of ancient sculptors - they moistened clothes, it is no coincidence that the death rate from pneumonia was very high in those years.

The French Journal de Maud in 1802 even advised its readers to visit the Montmartre cemetery to see how many young girls fell victim to the "naked" fashion.

Teresa Cabarrus

Parisian newspapers were full of mourning chronicles: "Madame de Noel died after the ball, at nineteen, Mademoiselle de Juigner - at eighteen, Mademoiselle Chaptal - at sixteen!" More women have died in the few years of this extravagant fashion than in the previous 40 years.

Teresa Tallien was considered “more beautiful than the Capitoline Venus” - she had such a perfect figure. She introduced the "naked" fashion. The lightest dress weighed 200 grams!

Only thanks to the Egyptian campaign of Napoleon, cashmere shawls came into fashion, which were widely popularized by the wife of the emperor, Josephine.

In the 20s of the 19th century, the figure of a woman resembles an hourglass: rounded “swollen” sleeves, a wasp waist, and a wide skirt. The corset came into fashion. The waist should be unnatural in volume - about 55 cm.

Vladimir Ivanovich Gau. Portrait of Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova-Pushkina.

The desire for an “ideal” waist often led to tragic consequences. So, in 1859, a 23-year-old fashionista died after a ball due to the fact that three ribs compressed by a corset stuck into her liver.

W. Gau. Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova. 1842-1843

For the sake of beauty, the ladies were ready to endure various inconveniences: the wide brim of ladies' hats that hung over their eyes, and they had to move almost by touch, long and heavy hems of dresses.

P. Delaroche. Portrait of the singer Henriette Sontag, 1831.

The authoritative British magazine The Lancet in the 1820s suggested that women should blame the weight of their dresses, which was about 20 kilograms, for muscle weakness, diseases of the nervous system and other ailments. Often ladies get confused in their own skirts. Queen Victoria somehow sprained her ankle by stepping on her hem.

In the second half of the 19th century, the desire for artificiality revived. A healthy blush and tan, a strong, strong body have become signs of low origin. Wasp waists, pale faces, delicacy and refinement were considered the ideal of beauty.

The laughter and tears of a secular beauty should be beautiful and graceful. Laughter should not be loud, but crumbly. When crying, you can drop no more than three or four tears and watch so as not to spoil the complexion.

Camille Claudel

Painful femininity is in fashion. We are talking about both mental illnesses, in which imbalance borders on madness, Camille Claudel, the muse and student of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, can serve as a symbol of such a beauty, as well as illnesses of the body, like Marguerite Gauthier, a courtesan mortally ill with tuberculosis - the heroine of the novel "The Lady of the Camellias". » Alexandre Dumas.

To give the face a matte pallor, the ladies took crushed chalk three times a day (well-cleaned chalk could be obtained in drug stores; it was impossible to use crayons intended for card games) and drank vinegar and lemon juice, and circles under the eyes were achieved due to a special lack of sleep.

The character of a woman is very peculiarly correlated with the culture of the era. On the one hand, a woman with her intense emotionality, vividly and directly absorbs the features of her time, to a large extent overtaking it. In this sense, the character of a woman can be called one of the most sensitive barometers of social life.

The reforms of Peter I turned not only public life, but also the way of life upside down. PThe first consequence of the reforms for women is the desireexternallyto change her appearance, to approach the type of a Western European secular woman. Changing clothes, hairstyles.The whole way of behaving has also changed. During the years of Peter the Great's reforms and subsequent ones, a woman strove to resemble her grandmothers (and peasant women) as little as possible.

The position of women in Russian society has changed even more since the beginning of the 19th century. The Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century was not in vain for the women of the coming century. The struggle for equality of the enlighteners had a direct bearing on women, although many men were still far from the idea of ​​true equality with a woman, who was looked upon as an inferior, empty being.

The life of a secular society was closely connected with literature, in which romanticism was a fashionable fad at that time. The female character, in addition to family relationships, traditional home education (only a few got into the Smolny Institute) was formed at the expense of romantic literature. We can say that the secular woman of Pushkin's time was created by books. The novels were some self-taught books of the then woman, they formed a new female ideal image, which, like the fashion for new outfits, was followed by both metropolitan and provincial noble ladies.

The female ideal of the 18th century - full of health, portly, full of beauty - is being replaced by a pale, dreamy, sad woman of romanticism "with a French book in her hands, with a sad thought in her eyes." In order to look fashionable, the girls tormented themselves with hunger, did not go out into the sun for months. Tears and fainting were in vogue. Real life, like health, childbearing, motherhood, seemed "vulgar", "unworthy" of a true romantic girl. Following the new ideal raised the woman to a pedestal, the poeticization of the woman began, which ultimately contributed to the increase in the social status of the woman, the growth of true equality, which was demonstrated by yesterday's languid young ladies who became the wives of the Decembrists.

During this period, several different types of female nature were formed in Russian noble society.

One of the most striking types can be called the type of "salon lady", "metropolitan stuff" or "socialite", as she would be called now. In the capital, in high society, this type met most often. These refined beauties, created by a fashionable French salon education, limited their entire range of interests to the boudoir, drawing room and ballroom, where they were called to reign.

They were called queens of living rooms, trendsetters. Although at the beginning of the 19th century a woman was excluded from public life, her exclusion from the world of service did not deprive her of her significance. On the contrary, the role of women in the life of the nobility and culture is becoming more and more noticeable.

Of particular importance in this sense was the so-called secular life and, more specifically, the phenomenon of the salon (including the literary one). Russian society in many respects here followed the French models, according to which secular life carried itself out primarily through the salons. "Going out into the world" meant "going to salons."

In Russia, as in France at the beginning of the 19th century, the salons were different: both courtly, and luxuriously secular, and more chamber, semi-family, and those where dancing, cards, social chatter reigned, and literary and musical, and intellectual, reminiscent of university seminars.

Anna Alekseevna Olenina

The mistress of the salon was the center, a culturally significant figure, a "legislator". At the same time, while maintaining the status of an educated, intelligent, enlightened woman, she could, of course, have a different cultural image: a charming beauty, a minx leading a risky literary and erotic game, sweet and seductive society wit,refined, musical, Europeanized aristocrat,strict, somewhat cold "Russian Madame Recamier" orcalm, wise intellectual.

Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya

Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova

The 19th century is a time of flirting, considerable freedom for secular women and men. Marriage is not sacred, fidelity is not regarded as a virtue of spouses. Every woman had to have her boyfriend or lover.Secular married women enjoyed great freedom in their relations with men (by the way, wedding rings were first worn on the index finger, and only by the middle of the 19th century did it appear on the ring finger of the right hand). Subject to all the necessary standards of decency, they did not limit themselves to anything. As you know, the “genius of pure beauty” Anna Kern, while remaining a married woman, once married to an elderly general, led a separate, actually independent life, being carried away by herself and falling in love with men, among whom was A. S. Pushkin, and by the end her life - even a young student.

Rules of the capital coquette.

Coquetry, the uninterrupted triumph of reason over feelings; the coquette must inspire love without ever feeling it; she must reflect this feeling from herself as much as she must instill it in others; it is her duty not to even show that she loves, for fear that the one who admires, who seems to be preferred, would not be considered by her rivals as the happiest: her art consists in never depriving them of hope, without giving them any.

A husband, if he is a secular person, should wish his wife to be a coquette: such a property ensures his well-being; but first of all, it is necessary that the husband should have enough philosophy to agree to an unlimited power of attorney to his wife. A jealous man will not believe that his wife remains insensitive to the incessant searches with which they attempt to touch her heart; in the feelings with which they treat her, he will see only the intention to steal her love for him. That is why it happens that many women who would be only coquettes, from the impossibility of being such, become unfaithful; women love praise, caresses, small favors.

We call a coquette a young girl or woman who loves to dress up in order to please her husband or admirer. We also call a woman a coquette who, without any intention of being liked, follows fashion solely because her rank and condition require it.

Coquetry suspends the time of women, continues their youth and commitment to them: this is the correct calculation of reason. Let's excuse, however, the women who neglect coquetry, convinced of the impossibility of surrounding themselves with knights of hope, they neglected the property in which they did not find success.

High society, especially Moscow, already in the 18th century allowed originality, individuality of the female character. There were women who allowed themselves scandalous behavior, openly violated the rules of decency.

In the era of romanticism, "unusual" female characters fit into the philosophy of culture and at the same time became fashionable. In literature and in life, the image of a “demonic” woman arises, a violator of the rules, despising the conventions and lies of the secular world. Having arisen in literature, the ideal of a demonic woman actively invaded everyday life and created a whole gallery of women who destroy the norms of “decent” secular behavior. This character becomes one of the main ideals of the romantics.

Agrafena Fedorovna Zakrevskaya (1800-1879) - the wife of the Finnish Governor-General, since 1828 - the Minister of the Interior, and after 1848 - the Moscow Military Governor-General A. A. Zakrevsky. An extravagant beauty, Zakrevskaya was known for her scandalous connections. Her image attracted the attention of the best poets of the 1820s and 1830s. Pushkin wrote about her (the poem "Portrait", "Confidential"). Zakrevskaya was the prototype of Princess Nina in Baratynsky's poem "The Ball". And finally, according to the assumption of V. Veresaev, Pushkin painted her in the image of Nina Voronskaya in the 8th chapter of Eugene Onegin. Nina Voronskaya is a bright, extravagant beauty, "Cleopatra of the Neva" is the ideal of a romantic woman who has placed herself both outside the conventions of behavior and outside of morality.

Agrafena Fedorovna Zakrevskaya

Back in the 18th century, another original type of Russian young lady was formed in Russian society - an institute girl. These were girls who were educated in the Educational Society for Noble Maidens, founded in 1764 by Catherine II, later called the Smolny Institute. The pupils of this glorious institution were also called "smolyanka" or "monasteries". The main place in the curriculum was given to what was considered necessary for secular life: the study of languages ​​​​(primarily French) and the mastery of "noble sciences" - dancing, music, singing, etc. Their upbringing took place in strict isolation from the outside world, mired in "superstitions" and "malices". It was this that should have contributed to the creation of a “new breed” of secular women who could civilize the life of a noble society.

Special conditions for education in women's institutes, as the schools began to be called, arranged according to the model of the Educational Society for Noble Maidens, although they did not create a “new breed” of secular women, they formed an original female type. This is shown by the very word “institute”, meaning any person “with the behavioral traits and character of a pupil of such an institution (enthusiastic, naive, inexperienced, etc.)”. This image became a proverb, gave rise to many anecdotes and was reflected in fiction.

If the first "Smolyanka" were brought up in a humane and creative atmosphere, which was supported by the educational enthusiasm of the founders of the Educational Society, then later the formalism and routine of an ordinary state institution prevailed. All education began to be reduced to maintaining order, discipline and the external appearance of the institutes. The main means of education were punishments, which alienated the institute girls from the educators, most of whom were old maids who envied the youth and performed their police duties with particular zeal. Naturally, there was often a real war between the teachers and pupils. It continued in the institutions of the second half of the 19th century: the liberalization and humanization of the regime was held back by the lack of good and simply qualified teachers. Education was still based "more on manners, the ability to behave comme il faut, to answer politely, to squat after a lecture from a classy lady or when a teacher is called, to keep the body always straight, to speak only in foreign languages."

However, in relations between the institute girls themselves, the mannerisms and stiffness of institute etiquette were replaced by friendly frankness and spontaneity. Institutional "correction" was opposed here by the free expression of feelings. This led to the fact that usually restrained and even “embarrassing” in public, college girls could sometimes behave in a completely childish way. In her memoirs, one of the 19th-century college girls calls “stupid institution” what happened to her when the conversation with an unknown young man turned to the “institutional theme” and touched on her favorite subjects: “she began to clap her hands, jump, laugh.” "Institute" caused sharp criticism and ridicule from others when the pupils left the institute. “Did you come to us from the moon?” - a secular lady refers to college girls in Sofya Zakrevskaya’s novel “Institute” and further notes: “And this is childish innocence, which is so sharply shown with complete ignorance of secular decency ... I assure you, in society now you can recognize a college girl.”

The circumstances of life in a closed educational institution slowed down the maturation of institute girls. Although upbringing in a women's society accentuated the emotional experiences that arose in girls, the forms of their expression were distinguished by childish ritual and expressiveness. The heroine of Nadezhda Lukhmanova’s novel “Institute” wants to ask the person she feels sympathy for “something as a keepsake, and this “something” – a glove, a scarf, or at least a button – should be worn on her chest, secretly showered with kisses; then give something corresponding to him, and most importantly, cry and pray, cry in front of everyone, arousing interest and sympathy with these tears”: “everyone did this at the institute, and it turned out very well.” Affected sensitivity distinguished the institute girls released into the world from the surrounding society and was perceived by them as a typical institutional feature. “To show everyone your sadness,” the same heroine thinks, “they will still laugh, they will say: a sentimental college student.” This feature reflected the level of development of the pupils of the institutes of noble maidens, who entered adulthood with the soul and cultural skills of a teenage girl.

In many respects, they were not much different from their peers who had not received an institute education. This upbringing, for example, was never able to overcome the "superstition of the ages", which its founders counted on. Institute superstitions reflected everyday prejudices of noble society. They also included forms of “civilized” paganism characteristic of post-Petrine Russia, such as the deification of the wife of Alexander I, Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna, by pupils of the Patriotic Institute, who after her death ranked her among the “canon of saints” and made her their “guardian angel”. Elements of traditional beliefs are combined with the influence of Western European religious and everyday culture. The female institutes "everyone was afraid of the dead and ghosts", which contributed to the widespread spread of legends about "black women", "white ladies" and other supernatural inhabitants of the premises and territory of the institutes. A very suitable place for the existence of such stories was the ancient buildings of the Smolny Monastery, with which a walking legend was connected about a nun immured there, who frightened timid Smolensk women at night. When the “frightened imagination” drew “night ghosts” to the institute girls, they fought the fears in a tried and tested childish way.

“The talk about the miraculous and about ghosts was one of my favorites,” recalled a pupil of the Patriotic Institute. “The masters of storytelling spoke with extraordinary enthusiasm, changed their voices, widened their eyes, in the most amazing places grabbed the listeners by the hand, who ran away with a screech in different directions, but, having calmed down a little, the cowards returned to their abandoned places and greedily listened to the terrible story.”

It is known that the collective experience of fear helps to overcome it.

If the younger pupils were content with retelling "superstitious tales" heard from nurses and servants, then the older ones told "fairy tales" of their own composition, retelling novels they had read or invented by themselves.

Torn off from the interests of modern life, the institute courses of Russian and foreign literature were not replenished by extracurricular reading, which was limited and controlled in every possible way in order to protect the institute girls from “harmful” ideas and obscenities and preserve in them the childish innocence of mind and heart.

“Why do they need uplifting reading,” said the head of one of the institutes to a class lady who read in the evenings to the pupils of Turgenev, Dickens, Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, “it is necessary to elevate the people, and they are already from the upper class. It is important for them to cultivate innocence"

The Institute strictly guarded the infantile purity of its pupils. It was considered the basis of high morality. In an effort to leave the institute girls in the dark about sinful passions and vices, the educators reached uniform curiosities: sometimes the seventh commandment was even sealed with a piece of paper so that the pupils did not know at all what was being discussed here. Varlam Shalamov also wrote about special editions of the classics for college girls, in which “there were more dots than text”:

“The discarded places were collected in a special last volume of the publication, which the students could buy only after graduation. It was this last volume that was an object of special desire for institute girls. So the girls were fond of fiction, knowing “by heart” the last volume of the classic.

Even obscene anecdotes about schoolgirls come from ideas about their unconditional innocence and chastity.

However, the novels attracted pupils not only with a “sinful” theme or an entertaining plot that could be retold to friends before going to bed. They made it possible to get acquainted with the life that went beyond the "monastic" walls.

“I left the institute,” recalled V. N. Figner, “with knowledge of life and people only from the novels and short stories that I read.”

Naturally, many institute girls were overwhelmed with a thirst to get into the heroine of the novel. The “dreamers who have read novels” also contributed to this very much: they drew “intricate patterns on the canvas<…>poor things, poor in imagination, but longing for romantic pictures in their future.

Dreams about the future occupied an increasingly significant place in the lives of pupils as graduation from the institute approached. They dreamed not so much alone as together: together with their closest friend or the whole department before going to bed. This custom is a vivid example of the “excessive sociability” of the pupils, which taught them “not only to act, but also to think together; to consult with everyone in the smallest trifles, to express the slightest motives, to check their opinions with others. Mastering the complex art of walking in pairs (which served as one of the characteristic features of institute education), institute girls forgot how to walk alone. They really "more often had to say we than I." Hence the inevitability of collective dreaming out loud. The reaction of one of the heroes of Chekhov's "The Story of an Unknown Man" to the proposal to "dream out loud" is characteristic: "I was not at the institute, I did not study this science"

The markedly festive nature of life, which was dreamed of in institutes, draws attention. Institute girls started from the boring monotony of the order and the harsh discipline of institute life: the future was supposed to be the exact opposite of the reality that surrounded them. The experience of communicating with the outside world also played a certain role, whether it was meetings with smartly dressed people during Sunday meetings with relatives or institute balls, to which students from the most privileged educational institutions were invited. That is why the future life seemed to be an uninterrupted holiday. This gave rise to a dramatic collision between college dreams and reality: many college girls had to "descend straight from the clouds into the most unsightly world," which extremely complicated the already difficult process of adapting to reality.

Institute girls were very favorably received by the cultural elite of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Writers extolled the new type of Russian secular woman, although they saw in it completely different virtues: the classicists - seriousness and education, sentimentalists - naturalness and spontaneity. The schoolgirl continued to play the role of an ideal heroine in the romantic era, which opposed her to secular society and the world as an example of "high simplicity and childish frankness." The appearance of the schoolgirl, the "infantile purity" of thoughts and feelings, her detachment from the mundane prose of life - all this helped to see in her the romantic ideal of an "unearthly beauty." Recall the young schoolgirl from "Dead Souls" - "fresh blonde<..>with a charmingly rounded oval face, which the artist would take as a model for the Madonna ":" she only turned white and came out transparent and bright from a muddy and opaque crowd.

At the same time, there was a directly opposite view of the institute girl, in the light of which all the manners, habits and interests acquired by her looked like “pretense” and “sentimentality”. He proceeded from what was missing in institutes. Pupils of women's institutes were intended for the spiritual transformation of secular life, and therefore the institute did little to prepare them for practical life. The schoolgirls not only knew nothing, they generally understood little in practical life.

“Immediately after leaving the institute,” E. N. Vodovozova recalled, “I had not the slightest idea that, first of all, I should agree with the cab driver about the price, I didn’t know that he needed to pay the fare, and I didn’t have purse".

This caused a sharply negative reaction on the part of people busy with daily affairs and worries. They considered the institute girls to be “white-handed” and “stuffed with fools.” Along with ridicule of the “clumsiness” of the institute girls, “stereotypical judgments” were spread about them as “pretty ignorant creatures who think that pears grow on willows, remaining stupidly naive until the end of their lives.” ". Institutional naivety has become the talk of the town.

The ridicule and exaltation of schoolgirls have, in fact, one and the same starting point. They only reflect the different attitudes towards the childishness of the pupils of the institutes of noble maidens, which was cultivated by the atmosphere and life of the closed educational institution. If you look at the “stuffed fool” with some sympathy, then she turned out to be just a “small child” (as the institute maid says, referring to the pupil: “you are foolish, like a small child, just kalya-balya in French, yes bullshit on the piano"). And on the other hand, a skeptical assessment of the education and upbringing of the institute, when she served as a model of "secularism" and "poetry", immediately revealed her "childish, not feminine dignity" (which the hero of the drama conceived by A.V. Druzhinin, which then turned into the famous story "Polinka Saks"). In this regard, the female students themselves, who felt like “children” in an unfamiliar adult world, sometimes consciously played the role of a “child”, in every possible way emphasizing their childish naivety (cf. easily developed in college in the first years after graduation, because it was amused by others"). “Looking” like a high school girl often meant: speaking in a childish voice, giving it a specifically innocent tone, and looking like a girl.

In the days of the 18th century - voluptuous sentimentalism, affectation and courtesanism that filled the idle, well-fed life of the secular environment, such lily young ladies liked it. And it didn’t matter that these lovely creatures, angels in the flesh, as they seemed on the parquet floor in a salon setting, in everyday life turned out to be bad mothers and wives, wasteful and inexperienced housewives, and in general, creatures, not to any work and useful activity. adapted.

More about the pupils of the Smolny Institute -

In order to describe other types of Russian girls from the nobility, we will again turn to fiction.

The type of county young lady is clearly represented in the works of Pushkin, who coined this term: these are Tatyana Larina (“Eugene Onegin”), and Masha Mironova (“The Captain's Daughter”) and Lisa Muromskaya (“The Young Lady-Peasant Woman”)

These cute, simple-minded and naive creatures are the exact opposite of the beauties of the capital. “These girls, who grew up under apple trees and between stacks, brought up by nannies and nature, are much nicer than our monotonous beauties, who before marriage adhere to the opinion of their mothers, and then to the opinion of their husbands,” Pushkin’s “Roman in Letters” says.

A song about the "county ladies", a poetic monument to them remains "Eugene Onegin", one of the best Pushkin's creations - the image of Tatyana. But after all, this cute image is actually significantly complicated - she is “Russian in soul (she doesn’t know why)”, “she didn’t know Russian very well.” And it is no coincidence that much of the collective image of the “county young lady” was transferred to Olga and other girls from the “dali of a free novel”, otherwise “Eugene Onegin” would not have been an “encyclopedia of Russian life” (Belinsky). Here we meet not only the “language of girlish dreams”, “the gullibility of an innocent soul”, “innocent years of prejudice”, but also a story about the upbringing of a “county young lady” in a “noble nest”, where two cultures meet, noble and folk:

The day of the provincial or district young lady was filled primarily with reading: French novels, poems, works of Russian writers. The county ladies drew knowledge about secular life (and about life in general) from books, but their feelings were fresh, their feelings were sharp, and their character was clear and strong.

Of great importance for the provincials were dinners, receptions at home and with neighbors, landowners.
They prepared for the release in advance, looking through fashion magazines, carefully choosing an outfit. It is this kind of local life that A.S. Pushkin describes in the story "The Young Lady Peasant Woman".

“What a charm these county ladies are!” Alexander Pushkin wrote. “Brought up in the open air, in the shade of their garden apple trees, they draw knowledge of light and life from books. For a young lady, the ringing of a bell is already an adventure, a trip to a nearby city is supposed to be an epoch in life: "

The Turgenev girl was the name of a very special type of Russian young ladies of the 19th century, which was formed in culture on the basis of a generalized image of the heroines of Turgenev's novels. In Turgenev's books, this is a reserved, but sensitive girl who, as a rule, grew up in nature on an estate (without the harmful influence of the world, the city), pure, modest and educated. She does not fit well with people, but has a deep inner life. She does not differ in bright beauty, she can be perceived as an ugly woman.

She falls in love with the main character, appreciating his true, not ostentatious virtues, the desire to serve the idea and does not pay attention to the external gloss of other contenders for her hand. Having made a decision, she faithfully and faithfully follows her beloved, despite the resistance of her parents or external circumstances. Sometimes falls in love with the unworthy, overestimating him. She has a strong personality that may not be noticeable at first; she sets a goal for herself and goes towards it, without turning off the path and sometimes achieving much more than a man; she can sacrifice herself for an idea.

Her features are enormous moral strength, "explosive expressiveness, determination to 'go to the end', sacrifice combined with an almost unearthly reverie", and a strong female character in Turgenev's books usually "supports" the weaker "Turgenev youth". Rationality in it is combined with impulses of true feeling and stubbornness; she loves stubbornly and relentlessly.

Almost everywhere in Turgenev's love, the initiative belongs to the woman; her pain is stronger and her blood is hotter, her feelings are sincere, more devoted than those of educated young people. She is always looking for heroes, she imperatively demands submission to the power of passion. She herself feels ready for sacrifice and demands it from another; when her illusion of a hero disappears, she has no choice but to be a heroine, to suffer, to act.

A distinctive feature of the "Turgenev girls" is that, despite their outward softness, they retain complete intransigence in relation to the conservative environment that brought them up. “In all of them, the“ fire ”burns in spite of their relatives, their families, who are only thinking about how to put out this fire. They are all independent and live their own lives.”

This type includes such female characters from Turgenev's works as Natalya Lasunskaya ("Rudin"), Elena Stakhova ("On the Eve"), Marianna Sinetskaya ("Nov") and Elizaveta Kalitina ("Noble Nest")

In our time, this literary stereotype has been somewhat deformed and “Turgenev girls” have begun to mistakenly call another type of Russian young ladies - “muslin”.

The "muslin" young lady has a different characteristic than the "Turgenev". The expression is appeared in Russia in the 60s of the 19th century in a democratic environment and meant a very specific social and psychological type with the same very specific moral guidelines and artistic tastes.

N.G. Pomyalovsky was the first to use this expression in the novel “Petty Bourgeois Happiness”, at the same time expressing his understanding of such a female type:

"Kisein girl! They read Marlinsky, perhaps, they read Pushkin; they sing "I loved all the flowers more than a rose" and "The dove is moaning"; they always dream, they always play ... Light, lively girls, they love to be sentimental, deliberately burr, laugh and eat goodies ... And how many of these poor muslin creatures we have.

A special style of behavior, a manner of dressing, which later gave rise to the expression "muslin lady", began to take shape as early as the 30s and 40s of the 19th century. In time, this coincides with the new silhouette in clothes. The waist falls into place and is emphasized in every possible way by incredibly puffy petticoats, which will later be replaced by a crinoline made of metal rings. The new silhouette was supposed to emphasize the fragility, tenderness, airiness of a woman. Bowed heads, downcast eyes, slow, smooth movements or, on the contrary, ostentatious playfulness were characteristic of that time. Loyalty to the image required girls of this type to be simpering at the table, refusing food, constantly portraying detachment from the world and loftiness of feelings. The plastic properties of thin, light fabrics contributed to the identification of romantic airiness.

This cutesy and pampered female type is very reminiscent of college girls, who are also overly sentimental, romantic and little adapted to real life. The very expression "muslin lady" goes back to the graduation uniform of female students: white muslin dresses with pink sashes.

Pushkin, a great connoisseur of estate culture, spoke very impartially about such "muslin young ladies":

But you are the province of Pskov,
The greenhouse of my youthful days,
What could be, the country is deaf,
More insufferable than your young ladies?
Between them there is no - I note by the way -
No subtle politeness to know
Nor the frivolity of cute whores.
I, respecting the Russian spirit,
I would forgive them their gossip, swagger,
Family jokes witticism,
Defects of the tooth, impurity,
And obscenity and pretense,
But how to forgive them fashionable nonsense
And clumsy etiquette?

"Kisein young ladies" were opposed by a different type of Russian girls - nihilists. Or "blue stocking"

Female students of the Higher Women's Architectural Courses E. F. Bagaeva in St. Petersburg.

There are several versions of the origin of the expression "blue stocking" in the literature. According to one of them, the expression denoted a circle of people of both sexes gathering in England in 1780s years with Lady Montagu for discussions on literary and scientific topics. The soul of the conversations was the scientist B. Stellinfleet, who, neglecting fashion, wore blue stockings with a dark dress. When he did not appear in the circle, they repeated: “We cannot live without blue stockings, today the conversation is going badly - there are no blue stockings!” Thus, for the first time, the nickname Bluestocking was received not by a woman, but by a man.
According to another version, the 18th-century Dutch admiral Eduard Boskaven, known as the "Fearless old man" or "Wryneck Dick", was the husband of one of the most enthusiastic members of the circle. He spoke rudely of his wife's intellectual pursuits and derisively referred to the meetings of the circle as meetings of the Blue Stockings Society.

The emerging freedom of a woman of light in Russian society was also manifested in the fact that in the 19th century, starting from the war of 1812, many secular girls turned into sisters of mercy, instead of balls they plucked lint and looked after the wounded, grieving the misfortune that befell the country. They did the same in the Crimean War and during other wars.

With the beginning of the reforms of Alexander II in the 1860s, the attitude towards women in general changed. A long and painful process of emancipation begins in Russia. From the female environment, especially from among the noblewomen, many determined, courageous women came out who openly broke with their environment, family, traditional way of life, denied the need for marriage, family, actively participated in social, scientific and revolutionary activities. Among them were such "nihilists" as Vera Zasulich, Sofya Perovskaya, Vera Figner and many others who were members of revolutionary circles that participated in the well-known "going to the people" in the 1860s, then became members of the terrorist groups "Narodnaya Volya", and then the Socialist-Revolutionary organizations. Revolutionary women were sometimes more courageous and more fanatical than their brothers in the struggle. They, without hesitation, went to kill major dignitaries, endured bullying and violence in prisons, but remained completely adamant fighters, enjoyed universal respect, and became leaders.

It must be said that Pushkin had an unflattering opinion about these girls:

God forbid I get together at the ball

With a seminarian in a yellow shawl

Ile academicians in a cap.

A.P. Chekhov in the story "Pink Stocking" wrote: "What good is it to be a blue stocking. Blue stocking... God knows what! Not a woman and not a man, and so the middle half, neither this nor that.

“Most nihilists are devoid of feminine grace and have no need to deliberately cultivate bad manners, they are tastelessly and dirtyly dressed, rarely wash their hands and never clean their nails, often wear glasses, cut their hair. They read almost exclusively Feuerbach and Buchner, despise art, address young people as “you”, do not hesitate in expressions, live independently or in phalanstery, and speak most of all about the exploitation of labor, the absurdity of the institution of the family and marriage, and about anatomy, ”they wrote. in newspapers in the 1860s.

Similar reasoning can be found in N. S. Leskov (“On the Knives”): “Sitting with your short-haired, dirty-necked young ladies and listening to their endless tales about a white bull, and inducing the word “work” from idleness, I got bored”

Italy, which rebelled against foreign domination, became a source of fashionable ideas for revolutionary-minded youth in Russia, and the red shirt - the garibaldi - was the identification mark of women of advanced views. It is curious that the “revolutionary” details in the description of the costumes and hairstyles of the nihilists are present only in those literary works, the authors of which, one way or another, condemn this movement (A. F. Pisemsky’s Agitated Sea, N. S. Leskov’s “On Knives”) ). In the literary legacy of Sofya Kovalevskaya, one of the few women of that time who realized her dream, the description of the emotional experiences and spiritual quest of the heroine (the story "The Nihilist") is more important.

Conscious asceticism in clothing, dark colors and white collars, which were preferred by women with progressive views, once they came into use, remained in Russian life for almost the entire first half of the 20th century.

At the beginning of the 19th century, in the Empire era, naturalness and simplicity were in fashion. Even the ladies tried to achieve a cosmetic effect in natural ways: if pallor was required, they drank vinegar, if blush, they ate strawberries. For a while, even jewelry goes out of fashion. It is believed that the more beautiful a woman is, the less she needs jewelry ...

The whiteness and tenderness of the hands during the Empire were so valued that they even put on gloves at night.

In the outfits, imitation of antique clothes is noticeable. Since these dresses were made mainly from thin translucent muslin, fashionistas risked catching a cold on especially cold days.

Madame Recamier - the famous Parisian beauty, the most famous mistress of the literary salon in history

"Portrait of Madame Recamier" is a painting by the French artist Jacques Louis David, painted in 1800.

To create spectacular draperies that beautifully depict natural data, the ladies used a simple trick of ancient sculptors - they moistened clothes, it is no coincidence that the death rate from pneumonia was very high in those years.

The French Journal de Maud in 1802 even advised its readers to visit the Montmartre cemetery to see how many young girls fell victim to the "naked" fashion.

Teresa Cabarrus

Parisian newspapers were full of mourning chronicles: "Madame de Noel died after the ball, at nineteen, Mademoiselle de Juigner - at eighteen, Mademoiselle Chaptal - at sixteen!" More women have died in the few years of this extravagant fashion than in the previous 40 years.

Teresa Tallien was considered “more beautiful than the Capitoline Venus” - she had such a perfect figure. She introduced the "naked" fashion. The lightest dress weighed 200 grams!

Only thanks to the Egyptian campaign of Napoleon, cashmere shawls came into fashion, which were widely popularized by the wife of the emperor, Josephine.

In the 20s of the 19th century, the figure of a woman resembles an hourglass: rounded “swollen” sleeves, a wasp waist, and a wide skirt. The corset came into fashion. The waist should be unnatural in volume - about 55 cm.

Vladimir Ivanovich Gau. Portrait of Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova-Pushkina.

The desire for an “ideal” waist often led to tragic consequences. So, in 1859, a 23-year-old fashionista died after a ball due to the fact that three ribs compressed by a corset stuck into her liver.

W. Gau. Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova. 1842-1843

For the sake of beauty, the ladies were ready to endure various inconveniences: the wide brim of ladies' hats that hung over their eyes, and they had to move almost by touch, long and heavy hems of dresses.

P. Delaroche. Portrait of the singer Henriette Sontag, 1831.

The authoritative British magazine The Lancet in the 1820s suggested that women should blame the weight of their dresses, which was about 20 kilograms, for muscle weakness, diseases of the nervous system and other ailments. Often ladies get confused in their own skirts. Queen Victoria somehow sprained her ankle by stepping on her hem.

In the second half of the 19th century, the desire for artificiality revived. A healthy blush and tan, a strong, strong body have become signs of low origin. Wasp waists, pale faces, delicacy and refinement were considered the ideal of beauty.

The laughter and tears of a secular beauty should be beautiful and graceful. Laughter should not be loud, but crumbly. When crying, you can drop no more than three or four tears and watch so as not to spoil the complexion.

Camille Claudel

Painful femininity is in fashion. We are talking about both mental illnesses, in which imbalance borders on madness, Camille Claudel, the muse and student of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, can serve as a symbol of such a beauty, as well as illnesses of the body, like Marguerite Gauthier, a courtesan mortally ill with tuberculosis - the heroine of the novel "The Lady of the Camellias". » Alexandre Dumas.

To give the face a matte pallor, the ladies took crushed chalk three times a day (well-cleaned chalk could be obtained in drug stores; it was impossible to use crayons intended for card games) and drank vinegar and lemon juice, and circles under the eyes were achieved due to a special lack of sleep.

The first, of the most beautiful women of Russia presented today, although not Russian by birth, is undoubtedly one of those who made up the glory of Russia.
Nina Alexandrvna Griboyedova, Georgian princess Chavchavadze - "Black Rose of Tiflis".
She was born and grew up in Tsinandali, where the estate of the princes Chavchavadze - Dadiani was located. Already in her early youth, Nino was distinguished by her beauty and the article inherent in Georgian women. Griboedov, who served in Tiflis in 1822, often visited the prince's house and even gave music lessons to his daughter. Once, jokingly, “Uncle Sandro,” as Nina called him, told his little student: “If you continue to try so hard, I will marry you.” But when he visited this house again after 6 years, upon his return from Persia, he was not in the mood for jokes - he was struck by the beauty of the grown-up Nina and her intelligence.

Princess Nino Chavchavadze

:
General (and poet) Grigory Orbeliani was in love with her unrequitedly for 30 years, but she never married a second time, rejecting all proposals and courtship.
In vain the suitors rush here from different places in a crowd.
There are many brides in Georgia, but I can't be anyone's wife!
Perhaps these words of Tamara from the poem "The Demon" inspired Lermontov's image of Nina. And the “ruler of Sinodal” (Tsinandali) is Griboyedov. In any case, her love and loyalty to her tragically deceased husband became legendary during her lifetime; the name of Nina Chavchavadze was surrounded by honor and respect, she was called the Black Rose of Tiflis. But she did not shy away from people, on the contrary, they were drawn to her, she helped many.
Several pictorial and verbal portraits of Nina have been preserved. Both of them convey a captivating and admirable image. Here, for example, a certain Sinyavin, who is undoubtedly in love with her, exclaims: “No, such perfection cannot exist in the world: beauty, heart, feelings, inexplicable kindness! How smart! I'm afraid no one compares to her." General Albrant writes to his friend from Tiflis: “Nina Alexandrovna's smile is so good - like a blessing! When you meet, say that I worship her, like the Mohammedans worship the rising sun! And here is the testimony of a contemporary: “One of the most charming creatures is a beautiful woman with a rare mind. Everyone agrees that this is the perfect woman.
Of course, she suffered from loneliness, from the absence of children. She begged a relative to give her a newborn daughter to raise: “You are surrounded by children, and I am all alone!”
Her pupil Ekaterina later recalled that Aunt Nina went every day, where - the girl found out when she grew up a little, and she began to take her with her to her husband's grave.
Nina Aleksandrovna Griboyedova, born Princess Chavchavadze, died in June 1857, at the age of forty-nine, during an epidemic of cholera that came to Tiflis from Persia. She refused to leave the city, like most wealthy families. “There are only two doctors in the city and a community of sisters of mercy at the Russian hospital. I won't be redundant." Her last words were: "Me ... next to him."
..There, in a dark grotto - a mausoleum,
And - a modest gift from a widow -
The lamp shines in the semi-darkness,
For you to read
That inscription, and so that you
I reminded myself -
Two griefs: grief from love
And grief from the mind.
Yakov Polonsky.

Varvara Asenkova - since 1836, an actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater. The very first appearance on the stage of Alexandrinka brought her a triumph. Asenkova, was not only talented, but also very elegant, charming and feminine. She mainly played in vaudeville, her “Hussar Maiden” was especially famous. Nevertheless, she soon appeared with no less success in the dramatic images of Ophelia, Esmeralda, having replayed a huge number of roles for 6 years on stage.

Varvara Asenkova

She was admired by Belinsky and Nashchokin, the young writer Nekrasov dedicated the poems “Ophelia” and “In Memory of Asenkova” to her.
... I saw little
More beautiful heads;
Your voice sounded sweet
Your every step was dexterous;
Your soul was tender
Beautiful like the body
She did not bear the slander
Enemies are not defeated!
.. your sunset
Was strange and beautiful
Burning fire deep look,
poignant and clear;
Poor health, envy and gossip provoked her consumption and early death. There were such a huge number of people at her funeral that they were compared with Pushkin's funeral. In Soviet times, a wonderful film "The Green Carriage" was shot about the short and tragic life of Asenkova.

Julia Samoilova (nee Countess Palen) is the beloved woman and muse of Karl Bryullov, his “Italian sun”.
Young Yulinka Palen

Her beautiful face can be seen in many of his paintings, for example, in the “Portrait of Yulia Samoilova with her adopted daughter Jovanina and a black woman”

And on the even more famous “Portrait of Countess Samoilova, leaving the ball with her adopted daughter Amazilia”, and in “The Death of Pompeii”, her features are given to several female images. Julia on the maternal side came from the Skavronsky family (yes, those same relatives of Catherine 1 - Martha Skavronskaya). This woman mostly lived in Italy and she herself looked like a luxurious, sultry Italian. The Countess was distinguished not only by her southern beauty, but also by her independent, free character.

“The last of the Skavronsky family” constantly annoyed the sovereign by the fact that all the fashionable and refined society did not come to Tsarskoye Selo, to the summer Imperial Court, but a few miles away, to the large estate of Count Slavyanka (near Petersburg). The emperor offered her to sell the Count Slavyanka to the "royal treasury" along with a luxurious house built according to the design of the famous St. Petersburg architect and artist - Alexander Bryullov. The countess obeyed the imperial proposal, which looked like an order, but said to one of the high dignitaries entering the royal chambers: "Tell the emperor that we did not go to Grafskaya Slavyanka, but to Countess Samoilova."
She had two absolutely lovely adopted daughters, whom I have already mentioned, and we can also admire the portrait of Giovannina in the famous Bryullov painting “Horsewoman” (by the way, Amacilia is also there - a little girl on the balcony).

Yulia Petrovna Vrevskaya - Baroness, folk heroine of Russia and Bulgaria. After the death of her husband, she devoted herself to serving the Fatherland and the cause of the liberation of Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke, becoming a sister of mercy during the Russian-Turkish war. At the same time, she was a remarkably beautiful woman. According to contemporaries, “Yulia Petrovna is distinguished by some special charm, something sublime, which is especially attractive and not forgotten, she is charming not only with her appearance, feminine grace, but also with endless kindness and friendliness.” Portrait of Baroness Yulia Vrevskaya

She died quite young of typhus, already at the end of the war, in a front-line hospital in the Bulgarian village of Byala. She was friends with V. Hugo and especially with I. Turgenev, who respected and admired her immensely. It is interesting that Turgenev, as it were, foresaw the legendary fate of Vrevskaya, predicted much of the life of Yulia Petrovna in the novel "On the Eve", and now, after a quarter of a century, the story of Elena Stakhova and Dmitry Insarov is repeated in living reality. About the life of Vrevskaya, her feat, or as they used to say asceticism, her love and death, the story of the Bulgarian writer G. Karastoyanov "Loyalty for Loyalty" was written. . The ardent patriotic feeling of her close friend touched her tender heart. Not seeing Bulgaria, she selflessly fell in love with her,” writes Karostoyanov. Yulia Petrovna Vrevskaya dedicated their poems to Y. Polonsky - “Under the Red Cross”, V. Hugo - “The Russian Rose that Died on Bulgarian Land”, I. Turgenev “In Memory of Yulia Vrevskaya”, in 1977 the Russian-Bulgarian film “Julia Vrevskaya" with Lyudmila Savelyeva in the title role.

... What are titles and titles
Compared to a big soul? ..
You wanted freedom for your brothers
You wanted the Bulgarians to be happy...
You died away from Russian rivers,
To become a proud legend through the years.
And outside the window circled the last snow,
To drink the spring of freedom...
Bulgarian poet Ilia Ganchev - "Julia Vrevskaya"

Sister merciful Yu.P. Vrevskaya.

“In the mud, on the smelly damp straw, under the canopy of a dilapidated barn, hastily turned into a camping military hospital, in a devastated Bulgarian village - she was dying of typhus for more than two weeks.
She was unconscious - and not a single doctor even looked at her; the sick soldiers she cared for, while still able to stand, rose in turn from their infected lairs to bring to her parched lips a few drops of water in a shard of a broken pot.
She was young, beautiful; the highest society knew her; even dignitaries inquired about it. The ladies envied her, the men trailed after her... two or three people secretly and deeply loved her. Life smiled at her; But there are smiles worse than tears.
A tender meek heart... and such strength, such a thirst for sacrifice! Help those in need of help ... she did not know another happiness ... did not know - and did not know. All other happiness passed by. But she reconciled with this long ago - and all, blazing with the fire of unquenchable faith, gave herself up to serve her neighbors.
What cherished treasures she buried there, in the depths of her soul, in her very hiding place, no one ever knew - and now, of course, she will not know.
Yes, and why? The sacrifice has been made... the deed is done.
May her dear shadow not be offended by this late flower, which I dare to lay on her grave! ... ". I. Turgenev "In memory of Yu. P. Vrevskaya"

Varvara Rimskaya - Korsakova, (nee Mergasova) - her portrait still delights visitors to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

At one time, the original beauty of this "Tatar Venus", as she was nicknamed in Paris (and she really is a native of the Volga banks, from the Kostroma province) made a splash in France. At masquerades, Varvara liked to appear in exotic, even defiantly revealing outfits: either the priestesses of Tanit, whose costume consisted of a light gas cape that did not hide the outlines of a magnificent figure, or savages in fluttering ribbons and scraps of fabric, allowing those present to see "the most beautiful legs in Europe" . Her behavior was more than bold even for France and caused some displeasure of Queen Eugenie Montijo. Leo Tolstoy mentioned her in the novel Anna Karenina, under the name of Lidi Korsunskaya, for example, in a scene at a ball: “There was the impossibly naked beauty Lidi, Korsunsky’s wife.” Those who consider Korsakov only an outrageous fashionable "socialite" were quite surprised by the release of the book she wrote, even the epigraph of which was far from frivolous "Deprivation and sorrow showed me God, and happiness made me know Him."
On the Internet, Varvara is sometimes passed off as the wife of the composer Rimsky-Korsakov, but in more serious sources of her family or other connection with the author of famous operas, I did not find anything in common except for her last name. Her husband Nikolai Korsakov was first the leader of the Vyazma nobility, then a military man, participated in the Battle of Sevastopol and was awarded the St. George Cross.

Women of the Yusupov family were famous not only for their wealth and nobility, but also for their beauty. There are three on my list. Zinaida Nikolaevna Yusupova is best known - both as one of the most beautiful and charming women of her time (and the richest), and as the mother of Felix Yusupov, the main character in the murder of Rasputin. Many portraits of Z.N. Yusupova, the most famous was written by V. Serov. The princess has been wearing it for about 40 years, but she is still incomparably good.
Sometimes she is confused with another Zinaida Yusupova - her grandmother - Zinaida Ivanovna, also a beautiful woman and a difficult fate and character.

Zinaida Ivanovna Yusupova (née Naryshkina)

There was an old belief about the curse of the Yusupov family. Their ancestors, the sons of the Tatar Murza Yusuf, converted to Orthodoxy back in the days of the Golden Horde and were cursed for apostasy. According to the curse, of all the Yusupovs born in the same generation, only one will live to be twenty-six years old, and this will continue until the complete destruction of the family. It came true without fail. No matter how many children the Yusupovs had, only one survived to twenty-six.
Zinaida Ivanovna married Boris Nikolaevich Yusupov as a very young girl, bore him a son, then a daughter who died in childbirth, and only after that did she find out about the family curse. Being a reasonable woman, she told her husband that she was not going to “give birth to the dead” in the future. The beauty had a lot of admirers in high society, and there were even rumors that the emperor himself was not indifferent to her. In any case, on the fundamental canvas of the artist Chernetsov, commissioned by Nicholas 1, which depicts the most famous people of the empire and the most famous beauties, Zinaida Ivanovna is present.
Zinaida Ivanovna was not forty when the old prince died and the princess began what is called "to live for herself." There were legends about her dizzying novels, but the most famous scandalous story of her passion for a young people's will. When he was imprisoned in the Shlisselburg fortress, the princess refused secular amusements, followed him, settled opposite the fortress and bribery achieved that they let him go to her at night.
This story was well known, they talked about it, but strangely enough, Zinaida Ivanovna was not condemned, recognizing the right of the beautiful princess to folly. , left Russia, abandoned the title of Princess Yusupova and became known as the Countess de Chavo, Marquise de Serres.
The story of the young Narodnaya Volya Yusupov was recalled after the revolution. One of the emigre newspapers printed a report that, while trying to find the Yusupov treasures, the Bolsheviks discovered a secret room in the palace on Liteiny Prospekt. But they did not find jewelry there, but a coffin with an embalmed man. Most likely, this was the one sentenced to death, the Narodnaya Volya, whose body Yusupova bought and transported to St. Petersburg. However, in the family, Zinaida Ivanovna was considered happy. All husbands died of old age, she lost her daughter during childbirth, when she had not yet had time to get used to her, she loved a lot, did not deny herself anything, and died surrounded by relatives.

Zinaida Nikolaevna Yusupova was born in 1861 in the family of Prince N. B. Yusupov, the last representative of the most ancient family. The owner of factories, mines, tenement houses and estates was unheard of rich. Zinaida Nikolaevna remained the only heiress of the family (sister Tatiana died of typhus at the age of 22). The daughter inherited from her father not only wealth, but also the best character traits. Clever, educated, she was one of the first beauties of St. Petersburg. At the age of 18, the princess was already actively involved in charity work: she became a trustee of a shelter for soldiers' widows. And a little later, dozens of shelters, hospitals, gymnasiums in St. Petersburg fell under her patronage, she helped Montenegrin families who suffered in the fight against the Turks, and during the First World War, trains and infirmaries were equipped at her expense, hospitals and sanatoriums were organized for the wounded, including on her estates.
The most noble suitors, including the most august persons, claimed the hand of a rich bride, but the princess was waiting for true love. She was already 20 years old, there was no end to the gentlemen, the old prince sent the prince's daughter for the prince, but everyone was refused. Once, in order to respect her father, the princess agreed to meet with another gentleman - Prince Battenberg, a pretender to the Bulgarian throne. He was accompanied by officer Felix Elston-Sumarokov. As a result, Battenberg was refused - Princess Yusupova fell in love at first sight with the lieutenant of the guards and the next day accepted his marriage proposal. The wedding of Princess Zinaida Yusupova and Felix Elston-Sumarokov took place in the spring of 1882 and became the main news of St. Petersburg for a long time: did the first beauty with such a dowry go down the aisle with a simple guards officer? However, Felix was the grandson of the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The old prince Yusupov did not go against her wishes. A year later, the first-born was born to the young - Nikolai, named after his grandfather. The old curse of the family was fulfilled with the two sons of Zinaida Nikolaevna: the Middle one died as a child, and Nikolai was killed in a duel in 1908, not having lived up to his twenty-sixth birthday only six months. The youngest - Felix was the only heir.
“Mother was amazing. Tall, thin, graceful, swarthy and black-haired, with eyes shining like stars. Smart, educated, artistic, kind. No one could resist her charms. But she did not boast of her talents, but was simplicity and modesty itself ”- this description was given to Zinaida Nikolaevna by her son Felix. You can imagine how beautiful she was as a girl. The princess did not blush and did not powder, her natural beauty was enough. . Of all the cosmetics, I used only homemade lotion. And with all the modesty of her behavior, she was considered the first fashionista of St. Petersburg: her outfits drove everyone crazy, and in her jewelry collection there was a well-known diamond, called the "Polar Star" for its size and beauty, Queen Marie Antoinette's earrings, Caroline's pearl and diamond diadem - Queen of Naples. One noble Spanish guest attended Yusupova's reception and recalled: "The princess was a very beautiful woman, she had such wonderful beauty that remains a symbol of the era. At the reception, the hostess of the house was in a kokoshnik decorated with giant pearls and diamonds ... they made her look to the empress"
Portrait of Zinaida Nikolaevna Yusupova in Russian costume

Yusupova's favorite decoration was Pelegrin's unique pearl. This pearl can be seen in Fleming's portrait of Zinaida Nikolaevna. Then, in a distant emigration, her son Felix would sell Pelegrina, and the trail of the beautiful woman's talisman would be lost.
Z.N. Yusupov, portrait by V. Serov />
There were legends about the mercy of Princess Yusupova. There are testimonies of those who were treated in her hospitals that the officers were invited here to dinners and evening tea, that the guests sat at a beautiful table and had casual conversations, that the princess knew about the condition of all seriously ill patients and was very cordial.
Zinaida Nikolaevna died far from Russia, in exile, in 1939 and was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery near Paris.

Irina Yusupova, daughter-in-law of Z.N. Yusupova, the wife of her son, the same Felix, will be presented in a post dedicated to the beauties of the early 20th century.

I love you, beauties of centuries,
for your careless flutter from the door,
for the right to live, breathing the life of inflorescences
and throwing the death of animals on his shoulders.
………………………………………………………………
I love it when, stepping like flying,
rush about, laughing and babbling.
The essence of femininity is eternally golden
all who are a poet, a sacred candle.

Bella Akhmadullina.

In an additional attachment to this post, a story about other wonderful Russian women. This is the widow of the hero of the Battle of Borodino, General Tuchkov Margarita (mother Maria), who left us not only an amazing story of love and fidelity, not only the Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands with the Spaso-Borodino Monastery, but also bread called Borodino; "the thunder of the court knights" maid of honor Smirnova-Rosset, Anna Kern, daughters of A.S. Pushkin, the serf actress Zhemchugova, who became Countess Sheremetyeva, Anna Olenina, Tatyana Potemkina.

The attachment: