The Second Interconnecting Study

Located behind the First Interconnecting Study, it precedes the Picture Gallery. The study is designed in the form of a rotunda, which made it possible to hide the thickness of the wall from the side of the Parade Ground and turn it into an elegant interior. The walls of the study are lined with pinkish artificial marble, while the ceiling painting imitates a golden mosaic. Initially, there were three bas-reliefs on the walls on ancient motifs: The Burial of the Ashes of Patroclus, Orestes, Pylades and Electra, and Perseus. They were made in 1797 by Philipp Jakob Scheffauer, the court sculptor of the Duke of Württemberg. They were not evacuated and became lost. Two reliefs (except for Perseus) were made by the sculptor V. Grigoriev in 1958 based on photographs and inserted into original restored frames. Decorative blue porcelain vases with gilded garlands and figures of satyrs (the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, sculptor Jean-Domenicus Rachette, 1798) are placed in niches, which are symmetrically arranged in the thickness of the walls. Near the window is the sculpture Ganymede with an Eagle by the sculptor François Duquesnoy, who worked in Italy at the end of the 18th century.

On the left side of the wall is a French secretary (Adam Weisweiler, the late 18th century), decorated with a faience plaque Offerings to Ceres, made at the Josiah Wedgwood Manufactory (England, the late 18th century). The secretary serves as a kind of stand for a unique French clock (Paris, 1796, clockmaker Louis-Jean Laguesse, enameler J. Coteaux) that received the name “skeleton” for its open clockwork mechanism. The clock consists of three dials located on top of each other: the upper one shows the phases of the Moon, the central one shows the time: hours, minutes, seconds, as well as the day of the week and the number of the month, while the lower one shows the months and seasons.