Council Staircase

The decoration of the light and spacious upper vestibule of the Council Staircase (mid-19th century; architect: Andrei Stakenscheider) also includes bright colours: the 18th-century ceiling painting of The Virtues Presenting Russian Youth to the Goddess Minerva by Gabriel François Doyen; a floor mosaic of coloured marble and openwork railings. The landing is adorned by sculptures and decorative pieces made of semiprecious stone. The malachite vase was created at the Imperial Yekaterinburg Lapidary Works in 1841–42 to designs by Carlo Rossi and Ivan (Johann Reinhold) Halberg. The table and model of a triumphal arch decorated with an assortment of coloured minerals were both created in Florence in the 19th century. The copy of the celebrated Apollo Belvedere is the work of a 17th-century Italian sculptor. The Apollo and Daphne group is a late 18th-century reproduction by Paolo Andrea Triscornia of a work by Bernini, while Cupid and Psyche was sculpted in the mid-19th century by Giovanni Maria Benzoni.