Pavel, Paolo or Paul?

Posted in Artists, Monuments, Museums & Galleries, Russia/Soviet Union

21 February 2021

In the summer of 2018 our family was in Italy for our son’s wedding. The ceremony took place in the church you can see in this picture, on the Isola dei Pescatori on Lake Maggiore.

I wasn’t expecting to find anything on that trip to feed my obsession with all things Russian. Sometimes it’s a relief to allow myself to think about something else. But even here there was a fascinating Russia-related experience to be had. I found out from a tourist information leaflet in the hotel that, on the other side of the lake, in the small town of Pallanza, was a gallery containing a collection of works bequeathed by the sculptor Pavel Troubetzkoy.

Pallanza

I already knew a little about Troubetzkoy as I had seen sculptures by him in Russian galleries. But above all I knew him to be the creator of probably my favourite statue in Russia – that of Tsar Alexander III on horseback. I’ll write a separate post about this monument – it deserves one of its own.

What I didn’t know before spending a happy afternoon in the Museo del Paesaggio Verbania, was that Troubetzkoy was born in Italy – in Intra, not far along the lake shore from Pallanza. Son of a Russian prince and an American opera-singer, he spent much of his life in Italy and was known there as Paolo. It was only when he was in Russia that he used the Russian version of his name – Pavel. The one sculpture by him in the Tate Gallery in London – a bust of George Bernard Shaw, a great friend of his – is catalogued under the name Paul Troubetzkoy. And when he lived in Paris he called himself Paul.

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Villa Ada, Ghiffa, Lake Maggiore – Troubetzkoy’s childhood home. Named after his mother. I think that’s Ada on the right, with the attractive headdress.

There is plenty of biographical material about him on the web. Here’s an article from the Tretyakov Gallery’s magazine. I’ll concentrate on showing some pictures from the catalogue I bought at the Pallanza museum, and some I took myself in the exhibit.