Narcissus (source)

After the acquisition of the Monrepos estate in 1788, the court teacher of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich A. L. Nikolai, the park was decorated with a large number of sculptures depicting ancient gods. However, due to vandalism of visitors, their number gradually decreased, and by the middle of the 19th century there were only three park sculptures left: Neptune in the Temple pavilion, Väinemäinen in the gorge of St. Nicholas and the marble Narcissus.

The sculpture of Narcissus was acquired by Baron Nikolai from the Italian architect Vincenzo Brenna , among other damaged statues. The image of an ancient Greek deity lacked a right hand. V. Brenna promised to send a master who would correct the purchased sculptures, but did not keep his promise. A. L. Nikolai decided to decorate the outdoor pool of the “Source of Silmia” with a statue of Narcissus looking at his reflection. It is believed that in his poem, "The Monrepos Estate in Finland. 1804 ”the owner of the estate romanticized the Finnish name for the spring“ Silmä ”(Finnish“ eye ”: according to local belief, the water from the spring had healing power that improves vision). In the presentation by Nikolai, who himself suffered from eye diseases, the beautiful nymph Silmiya felt sorry for the shepherd in love with her and returned his sight to him.

By order of the owner of the estate, O. Montferrand completed the project of the pavilion over the “Source of Silmia” in the 1820s: with a cast-iron grate, a niche for the statue of Narcissus and a mask of a lion, from which a stream of water flowed. Since that time, the spring began to be called "Narcissus." The water from the source was amazingly clean, it was even sold in pharmacies.

Like many other Vyborg monuments (such as the monument to Väinemäinen , the monument to Mikael Agricole , the monument to the White Finns , the monument to Independence , the monument to Peter I and others), the pavilion over the source "Narcissus" was badly damaged during the Soviet-Finnish wars (1939-1944) . The sculpture of Narcissus was lost. During the restoration work carried out in 1974 under the guidance of architect V.V. Dmitriev and sculptor T. Arkhangelskaya, the grill was restored (but it was made not of cast iron, but of steel with cast aluminum elements) and a lion mask ^[1] . To date, due to the displacement of the layers of the earth, water began to break through not from the mask, but from the bottom of the pool.

• Moshnik Yu.I., Efimov M.V. Monrepos from A to Z. - Vyborg: “Center for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage”, 2016. - 184 p. - ISBN 978-5-91882-032-2 .