Catherine the Great, the Time-Chomping Grasshopper, and the Midsummer Chronophage

[eilidhsd]

I used to know Catherine the Great quite well, back in my Enlightenment days. But that was a long time ago. All I could remember was that she was a good friend of Diderot, liked Voltaire, was vaccinated against chickenpox to set an example, and had a happy sex life.

The museum is currently running an exhibition on her life, with a lot of bits and bobs from the Hermitage, so I went through today.


Here's the lady:



and here she is on her horse:



The bits and pieces from the Hermitage and her palaces included the bust of Antinous,

dozens of cameos and intaglios, bits of dinner services, porcelain, snuff boxes, assorted outfits, and a stunning wooden sledge.
This was one of the paintings:



And I know that well because, in her last days, my mother did it as a tapestry.
Actually, my mother's version is better than the original, which looks flat.

And her lover Potemkin (Catherine's, not my mother's):

I liked Catherine's strength too, holding on for all those years to an empire to which she had no right, after the sudden, tragic and totally unexpected death of her husband from haemorrhoidal colic only months after he inherited the throne.
And, of course, that was a lie. His death was due entirely to the fact that no-one liked him, particularly Catherine, and to the actions of Catherine's lover Orlov:


Since it is the National Museum of Scotland, there is a Scottish twist to the exhibition, but there is plenty of material for that.
Her favourite architect was a Scot, Charles Cameron, whom she describes as a practising Jacobite. Given that he was born in 1745, the year the rebellion failed, I wonder what that involved. How do you practise for a rebellion which was over before you were walking?

Anyway, here's a poor image (given up trying to squash the catalogue into the scanner and photographed it instead) of his neoclassical Cameron Gallery, at Tsarskoye Selo (and that name thrills me because it features prominently in the Last Tsar which Mr McCallum reads to me often):


and a cross section of one of his staircases

Her doctor, the commander of her navy, and various others were Scottish, and she also got her weaponry for the Turkish war from an ironworks not far from here, although I know the place better as a manufacturer of drain covers than of cannon.

It was a good exhibition, and I'm now hinting to Other Half that it is time we visited the Hermitage.

However, on my way out I got stopped in my tracks by this creation, on the Museum wall between two floors:
The grasshopper moves, and at every step its claws pull the dial round a notch.

It is called Midsummer Chronophage, with chronophage being a time-eater, designed by John C Taylor who wanted to build a clock showing variable time because, he said, we all perceive the duration of time differently (especially as we get older).





I am enthralled. A time-chomping grasshopper...
Think I'll have it as an icon....