#anna tyutcheva

“Whenever I see the Empress among the public, I have the impression that she is immeasurably far away in soul, that she has nothing in common with this motley secular crowd that gathers around her. Her sisters-in-law, Grand Duchesses Maria Nikolaevna, Olga Nikolaevna and Alexandra Iosifovna, make a completely different impression. They shine with beauty, their facial features are more regular than those of the Empress, their posture is perhaps more regal, but the Empress has much more charm, a charm that comes from the soul and is difficult to define, but making one’s innermost soul-strings sound.”

“The first time I set eyes on the Grand Duchess, she was already twenty-eight years old, but still she looked very young. She retained that youthful appearance all her life; when she was forty, she could have been taken for a woman of thirty. Although she was tall and slender, the Empress was so thin and fragile that at first glance she gave no impression of a 'belle dame.” However, she was unusually elegant, with that special kind of grace only found in old German paintings or Madonnas by Albert Dürer. Though her facial features were regular, her beauty lay in the delicate color of her skin and her large blue eyes, which looked at you with both perception and timidity... She seemed almost out of place and uneasy in her role as mother, wife, and empress. She was tenderly attached to her family and conscientiously fulfilled the duties which her exalted rank demanded. Her mind was like her soul: refined, subtle, penetrating and extremely ironic, but lacking in breadth and initiative.”

—lady-in-waiting Anna Tyutcheva on Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia.

Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, daughter of Tsar Alexander II, with Anna Tyutcheva, 1864.