The only thing that always bugs me about the pictures in the Alexander Palace ( and in other palaces ) is that they always hang at an almost 45 degree angle to the floor.
Most decorating practices originate from need. Oil paintings are quite reflective, and photographs don't always convey the scale of those rooms and just how high some of those walls were. (Take a look, for example, at pictures that show chairs pushed against the walls in the Parade Rooms. What looks like a rather narrow baseboard around the wall actually rises up halfway to the chair seats.) If the paintings were not angled down, people in the rooms would not be able to see the paintings but only a reflective glare of light from windows or candles.
We today tend to view paintings as just part of the background decor -- sort of "tone setting" for the room. In earlier eras, paintings were often chosen to convey messages or make symbolic statements. This is one of the reasons that paintings were often hung in places that, at least to modern decorating sensibilities, look awkward or improperly scaled. Hence some of the enormous paintings in the Alexander Palace (and many other palaces) that looked stuffed into spaces that were not meant to take them. For a tsar using his palace to entertain, it was more important to remind his guests of his august, larger-than-life ancestors with 12-foot-high images of them than to maintain a sense of decorating proportion. Also, before photography emerged as the primary "documentary graphic" people relied on paintings to educate themselves about people and places, and everybody with any means at all bought and sold paintings and tried to develop an ability to judge their quality. So they actually paid quite a bit of attention to paintings -- their content and the details of their execution. Hence it was important that they be hung so as to facilitate examination.
Ditto for the mirrors, which people actually used to keep an eye on the state of their complicated dress and coiffures during the bustle of crowded social gatherings or dancing. (Such things are mentioned over and over in period novels.)
There are innumerable pictures of antique interiors, including the Parade Rooms of the Alexander Palace, with all the furniture pushed back against the walls rather that set out into the room as the furniture would have been used. This, too, was a practice driven by necessity. It was done in Asia, in Europe, and in colonial and federal America. In the age of candlelight, rooms were seldom kept lit unless they were actually in use. And, even in the wealthiest households, servants and occupants often transited through rooms in the dark, as lighting and carrying a candle was a bother and expense that most preferred to avoid if possible. (Remember that wicks had to be trimmed throughout the evening and, the less time they were kept lit, the easier. Even with servants to do it for you, it was an intrusion.) Consequently, furniture was pushed back to the walls when not in use so that people would not stumble over it in the dark. (Another little detail from the history of decoration: our modern habit of displaying candlesticks and candelabra with candles in them was viewed as very gauche by our ancestors. When a candle appliance was not in use no candle was kept in it, even if the appliance itself was on display. Candles were considered a dirty necessity, not something to which you drew attention.)
It is only as the 19th century progresses that one begins to see paintings and photographs of unoccupied rooms set up as they were used, and this corresponded with the arrival of gas lighting and the growing ease of keeping rooms lit.
This history of decoration is really quite fascinating and well worth some study for those interested in palaces and how they were actually used. So many of them today are staged as static tableaus with all sorts of compromises to modern decorating sensibilities. In many cases, these tableaus would have looked quite strange to the original palace occupants.
This is a weird little aside, perhaps, but it does convey how much we have tended to sterilize our image of royal lifestyles. One evening Louis XIV of France went to the apartment of Marie Adelaide of Savoy, a granddaughter-in-law whose company he particularly enjoyed, so that he could accompany her to the palace opera. When he was announced upon entry to her boudoir, a maid scurried out from underneath her skirts and made for the door. This maid had been giving Marie Adelaide a mild enema, as it was a current fad at court to take an enema before a court entertainment in order to enjoy the, uh, titillation as long as possible before having to repair to the close stool. Rather than Louis' being incensed or Marie Adelaide's being embarrassed, both had a ripping good laugh over catching her at it as Louis took her arm and escorted her (and her full bowel) to the opera.
Life in palaces was very different than most of us imagine it today.
