The Hermitage guide

The Department of Russian Culture

The Department of Russian Culture is the youngest of the Hermitage’s specialist departments. Its formation was directly connected with the changes in the Museum’s policy effected after the October Revolution of 1917, when materials began to be assembled so as to illustrate not only the history of art, as before, but other essential aspects of man’s cultural heritage as well. Once the Oriental Department and the Department of Prehistoric Culture had been opened, the need for an exhibition reflecting the historical advance of the Russian people became increasingly evident, all the more so since the Hermitage would be able to present the history of Russian culture in the light of its interrelations with the cultural history of other peoples inhabiting the Soviet Union and many countries lying beyond its borders.

The Department was founded in 1941, when a large and valuable collection was transferred to the Hermitage from the History Department of the Ethnographical Museum of the Peoples of the USSR in Leningrad. This contained tens of thousands of items illustrating various aspects of Russian culture and art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and including, among others, numerous exhibits from the former Gallery of Peter the Great, created in the early eighteenth century. The remainder of this Gallery reached the Museum later, with the materials which arrived from the Institute for the History of Science and Technology, the Russian Museum, and Peter the Great’s Summer Palace (all in Leningrad), where they had been preserved after the dispersal of the Gallery.

In 1941 the Institute for the History of Science and Technology transferred to the Hermitage an exceptionally valuable collection of instruments and machine tools dating from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. In 1949 the Department received from the Museum for the History of Artillery in Leningrad a unique collection of seventeenth- to twentieth-century Russian banners as well as many foreign ones taken as trophies in war; and in 1954 the Museum of the October Revolution in Leningrad presented the Hermitage with artistic and documentary material principally relating to the Decembrist Rebellion of 1825. Of particular interest among the accessions from other museums is a series of oil-paintings depicting the interiors of the Winter Palace (from the Palace Museum at Pavlovsk), and two collections of jewellery, one from the Central Reserve Store of Countryside Palace Museums, and the other from the State Repository in Moscow.

Over 3,500 objects of Russian applied art, more than 20,000 engravings and lithographs, and a large number of watercolours and pencil drawings came from other departments of the Hermitage where they had been assembled and preserved since the eighteenth century.

Since 1954 the Department has regularly sent out expeditions to various regions of the Russian Federation, in order to discover and collect examples of ancient Russian art. As a result, the Museum came into possession of over 150 works of early Russian art, including some thirteenth-century icons, such as a Si Nicholas by a painter of the Novgorod school, a group of fifteenth- to seventeenth-century icons by northern artists, and a sixteenth-century Our Lady of Smolensk, an icon from the Yaroslavl region.

Since 1958 the Department has been carrying on archaeological excavations in Pskov. Among the more remarkable recent findings are over 500 specimens of pendant seals — lead plaques with stamped designs and inscriptions — dating from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. In 1974 the archaeologists uncovered some precious late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century frescoes on the walls of the Church of the Intercession, built in 1398. The church was almost completely buried under earth fortifications constructed in 1701, and this saved both the building and its frescoes from subsequent destruction.

One of the most important sources of new accessions is the work of the Hermitage Purchasing Commission; another, donations made by private collectors. Among the more recent acquisitions, a collection of works by Russian craftsmen, bequested to the Museum by Sergei Pavlov, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, deserves particular attention. It contains forty-eight beautiful pieces of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century glassware, and over thirty pieces of silverwork, some of which bear the marks of well-known silversmiths.

During the last decade alone, the collections of the Department have almost doubled in size and now number over 285,000 items. In their present state they provide a fairly complete picture of Russian cultural history from the sixth to the nineteenth century. The permanent exhibitions illustrate the evolution of Russian representational art, architecture, literature, education, science, and technology. The composite arrangement of materials makes it possible to show more clearly the interrelations between the various phenomena of cultural life in the process of social development, and to give an idea of the great wealth of Russia’s cultural heritage.

The early periods in the history of Russian culture are represented by a rich variety of items. Most interesting of all are archaeological artefacts, which include several widely known complexes of finds, such as those unearthed in Kiev on the sites of the Desiatinnaya Church and the St Michael Golden-Domed Monastery; some material uncovered in Novgorod and on the fortified site of Raiki in the vicinity of Berdichev; and, finally, the Vladimir hoard of gold and silver articles. The superb craftsmanship of ancient Vladimir jewellers is well illustrated by gold kolt pendants, beads, riasnos (elaborate chains for kolt pendants), and agraffes with designs of the finest filigree work. The splendid collection of objects (over fourteen thousand items) found in 1957—64 during Mikhail Karger’s excavation of the ancient Russian town of Iziaslavl was also placed in the Hermitage. It is one of the richest complexes of finds relating to the culture and art of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Rus. The collection of manuscripts and early printed books has grown considerably over the last few years. It includes such magnificent specimens of Russian book decoration as fifteenth-century illuminated manuscripts of the Gospels, with miniatures and head ornaments; The Apostle and Ostrog Bible, printed by Ivan Fiodorov; a Psalter rendered in verse by Simeon Polotsky, printed in Moscow in 1680 and illustrated with an engraving by Afanasy Trukhmensky after a drawing by Simon Ushakov; and seventeenth-century Gospels in embossed bindings.

The collection of thirteenth- to eighteenth-century icons and eleventh- and twelfth-century frescoes is small but worthy of note. The Kiev, Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, and northern schools of painting are represented. Among the oldest examples of work by northern artists are some thirteenth- to sixteenth-century icons, of which a few bear inscriptions showing the date of execution, the painter’s and the patron’s names, and the place of origin. One of the early works of the Pskov school of icon painters is the Manifestation of Our Lord dating from the beginning of the fourteenth century. This icon is very close to the well-known frescoes in the Snetogorsky monastery near Pskov, which were executed in 1313. Among the earliest works owned by the Department are the fifteenth-century icon of St Theodore the Recruit and St Theodore Stratelates, of the Novgorod school, and the early sixteenth-century icons of St Nicholas, The Transfiguration, and The Nativity.

One must also mention the exceptionally important frescoes discovered by the expendition of Nikolai Voronin in Smolensk among the remains of the so-called Church on the Stream (twelfth and early thirteenth centuries). These frescoes used to decorate the lower section of the walls and acrosoleae of the church. Although badly damaged, they have retained their original lively colouring, parts of the design, and also an ornamentation showing birds, lion figures, etc. These frescoes throw light on the art of mural painting in Smolensk, which until quite recently was completely unknown.

The Department owns a small but carefully chosen collection of specimens of Russian decorative art of the twelfth to seventeenth centuries. This includes a wide range of objects, from gold and silver church plate studded with precious stones, to everyday items, such as ceramic tiles, and tools made from iron, tin, lead, and copper: framed mirrors, processional lanterns, window-frames, inkwells, tableware, kitchen utensils, caskets, small icons, and other things. The wealth of their forms bears witness to the fine taste and high artistic skill of the craftsmen concerned. These masters had an amazing command of a great variety of techniques — chasing, forging, engraving, niello, filigree, and granulation — and effectively combined silver and gold, enamels, gems, and pearls. One thirteenth-century copperplate with a representation of St Mark in gold is particularly interesting, as is the work of the celebrated silversmiths and engravers of the Kremlin Armoury — a unique seventeenth-century door from the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Veliky Ustiug, covered with numerous copperplates with gold and silver inlays and engraved biblical motifs.

There are also elegant silver koushes (scoops or ladles) of typically Russian forms, which remind one of a boat or perhaps a splendid bird swimming in the water, and spherical loving-cups decorated with ornamentation and inscriptions.

Finally, there is an extremely interesting collection of seventeenth-century Usolye enamels from the town of Solvychegodsk, including copper or silver bowls, scent bottles, caskets, and cups, all almost entirely covered with painted designs of brightly coloured enamels. These works have no counterparts in any other country. The Hermitage possesses many brilliant examples produced in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and showing a wealth of rich, saturated colours. Their intricate designs incorporate various flowers, birds and animals.

The collections illustrating the development of Russian culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are the most extensive and varied. Alongside paintings, sculptures, and works of the graphic arts, the Department preserves excellent collections of objects of applied and decorative art: furniture, textiles, and costumes, ceramics, gold and silver work, articles of copper, steel, bronze, stone, and wood.

The collection of paintings comprises almost 3,000 works by Russian artists — Vladimir Borovikovsky, Dmitry Levitsky, Karl Briullov, Alexei Venetsianov, Stepan Shchukin, Vasily Tropinin, and Nikolai Argunov; and foreign artists who lived in Russia, like Pietro Rotari, Carl Christineck, Jean-Louis Voile, and Johann-Baptist Lampi. This section differs from the famous collections of the Tretyakov Gallery or the Russian Museum in its approach to and choice of material, which is intended to illustrate the various stages in the progress of Russian culture. Of great interest to the cultural historian are portraits of Russian statesmen, scholars, inventors, writers, military leaders, and artists: Peter the Great, Boris Sheremetev, Mikhail Serdiukov, Andrei Nartov, Mikhail Lomonosov, Ivan Kulibin, Ivan Shuvalov, Gavrila Derzhavin, Alexander Suvorov, Francesco Bartolommeo Rastrelli, and many others; paintings by serf artists, such as M. Funtusov, Ivan Argunov, and Grigory Soroka; and portraits of people exemplifying various social types — landowners and civil servants, bankers, the military stationed in St Petersburg and in the provinces, retired soldiers, merchants, and minor officials.

Much information on the history of St Petersburg and Moscow is provided by the town views of such artists as the Swede Benjamin Patersson, who lived in Russia for more than thirty years, Karl Knappe, Fiodor Alexeyev, and Timofei Vasilyev. A series of paintings by pupils of Alexei Venetsianov (Yevgraf Krendovsky, Alexei Tyranov, Apollon Mokritsky, and others), showing palace interiors, help trace the architectural history of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. The battle scenes by Louis Caravacque, Alexander Kotzebue, Peter Hess, Auguste-Joseph Desarnod, Bogdan Willewalde, and other painters, record important events in the military history of the country.

The Department possesses over 8,000 drawings and watercolours, which include many early nineteenth-century portraits, rare miniatures, and silhouettes; views of country houses and estates, genre scenes, pictures of the interiors of mansions; and also the family albums of the gentry.

The numerous watercolour and gouache views of Russian towns and the countryside, particularly pictures of St Petersburg and its environs, further add to the collection of topographical paintings. The Department also contains rare architectural drawings of buildings in the capital as they were in the 1730s and 40s, and excellent views of nineteenth-century St Petersburg by Andrei Martynov, Vasily Sadovnikov, Carl Beggrow, Fiodor Neyelov, Maxim Vorobyov, Iosif Charlemagne, and other artists, and views of early nineteenth-century Moscow by Fiodor Alexeyev and watercolourists of his school.

Material relating to the military history of Russia includes portraits by Saint-Aubin of participants in the 1812 War; documentary sketches by Konstantin Filippov, done during the siege of Sevastopol in 1855; and scenes from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877—78 drawn by the English war correspondent Dick.

The unique collection of paintings and watercolours by the Decembrists show their places of imprisonment, forced labour and exile in Siberia. Among them are works by Nikolai Bestuzhev, Alexander Muravyov, and Nikolai Repnin. The Decembrists’ theme is developed in the pencil sketches by A. Ivanovsky, representing the leaders of the rebellion undergoing interrogation, and in the highly sensitive and inspired portraits of the wives of two of the Decembrists — Alexandra Muravyova, painted by the Russian watercolourist Piotr Sokolov, and Yelizaveta Naryshkina, by Nikolai Bestuzhev.

The Department’s collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century engravings and lithographs, one of the largest in the country, is in no way inferior even to those of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the History Museum in Moscow. It is based on a collection preserved in the Print Room of the Hermitage since the eighteenth century, whose keepers, the noted Russian engravers Gavrila Skorodumov, Nikolai Utkin, and Fiodor Jordan, aided its growth in every way they could. Since the October Revolution the Hermitage collection of Russian graphic art has increased to include over 35,000 works, the greater part of which are portraits.

Early eighteenth-century engraving is represented by the work of Alexei and Ivan Zubov, Adrian Schoonebeeck, Alexei Rostovtsev, and other artists. There are sumptuous albums containing plans and coloured views of St Petersburg in 1753; albums with coronation scenes; and rare prints by Ivan Sokolov, Grigory Kachalov, Yevgraf Chemesov, and Gavrila Skorodumov. All these are rightly considered masterpieces of world engraving and vividly illustrate eighteenth-century Russian graphic art, its variety of trends, subject matter, and technique. Early Russian lithographs of the 1810s and 20s are represented by the masterly works of Orest Kiprensky, Orlovsky, Carl Beggrow, Carl Hampeln, and others.

The collection of nineteenth-century Russian graphic art boasts excellent examples of patriotic cartoons from the period of the 1812 War against Napoleon; portraits by Nikolai Utkin and his pupils; xylographs by E. Bernardsky and K. Klodt: sketches of scenes from everyday life by Alexei Venetsianov and Ignaty Shchedrovsky; townscapes, portraits, and religious compositions by Fiodor Jordan and Ivan Pozhalostin; and graphic works by the Peredvizhniki.

The Hermitage collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints, drawings, and watercolours has great importance for the cultural historian since their subject matter reflects the most diverse areas of Russia’s cultural life at the time.

The Department’s section of sculpture is rather small. Among its most noteworthy possessions both historically and artistically are the bronze busts of Peter the Great and Alexander Menshikov by Carlo Bartolommeo Rastrelli and the series of copper and bronze bas-reliefs made in Andrei Nartov’s workshop in the 1720s in connection with the projected construction of a triumphal column in St Petersburg.

The Department owns a large and extremely varied collection of Russian artistic ceramics — about 11,000 items — which shows the development of the ceramic industry in Russia in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The bulk of this collection consists of porcelain. The products of the former Imperial Porcelain Factory in St Petersburg (now the Lomonosov Factory) are well represented. Particularly valuable are the specimens dating from the birth of the Russian porcelain industry in the mid-eighteenth century and associated with the name of its founder, Dmitry Vinogradov. These comprise a small cup of 1749, with a vine branch moulded in relief, a painted snuff-box bearing the mark of Vinogradov himself, and also items from Her Majesty’s Private Service (the first large Russian dinner service, made for the Empress Elizabeth) which are decorated with flower garlands moulded by hand.

In the second half of the eighteenth century the factory’s production was extremely varied both in design and decoration, and included dinner services for imperial palaces. The Hermitage collection contains items from some of these services, for example the Arabesque, Cabinet, and Yusupov ones.

Porcelain made in the first quarter of the nineteenth century was of more formal design but lavishly gilded. The Museum possesses only a few items from this period but those few are interesting and rare. Particularly beautiful are the large vases skilfully painted by accomplished artists. Early twentieth-century china is represented by the work of S. Sudbinin, K. Korovin, G. Zimin and others.

The collection also has numerous examples of porcelain manufactured by private factories. These small enterprises, founded at the turn of the nineteenth century, produced goods for the mass market. Almost half of them were situated in the region of Gzhel. The most important were the Francis Gardner and Alexei Popov factories which specialized in the production of small china figures, realistically representing characters from various social classes.

The collection of early Soviet china is very interesting, especially the work of Natalya and Helena Danko, Zinaida Kobyletskaya, and Alexandra Shchekatikhina-Pototskaya, as well as items based on the designs of Sergei Chekhonin.

The Department owns a fine collection of Russian glassware totalling more than 3,000 items. This includes sumptuous large goblets with engraved designs and gilt ornamentation, made in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries at the Izmailovo (near Moscow) and Yamburg factories; articles produced by the St Petersburg Glassworks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the products of the Maltsev and Alexei Bakhmetyev glassworks; and coloured glass objects which appeared in the mid-eighteenth century after Lomonosov discovered the secret of making smalt.

Gold- and silverwork and jewellery from the late seventeenth to early twentieth centuries are illustrated in the Hermitage by over 11,000 items. The collection contains works crafted by silversmiths in Moscow, St Petersburg, Novgorod, Veliky Ustiug, Kostroma, and Tobolsk. There are articles intended for the court and the nobility, such as ladles and goblets presented as a reward for loyal service, salvers, plates, vases (often made in commemoration of historical events), as well as personal ornaments: finger rings, earrings, and breast chains decorated with river pearls, tourmalines, coloured enamels, and Siberian emeralds. The work of such artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as P. Semionov, A. Grigoryev, I. Liebmann, Yu. Landt, and V. Sorkovanov is well represented.

Foremost among the Hermitage masterpieces of silverwork is the monumental tomb of St Alexander Nevsky, the military leader and statesman of Old Russia. It was made by craftsmen at the St Petersburg Mint in 1747—52 from silver mined in the Altai Mountains, and weighs about 1.5 tons. In addition to the sarcophagus, which is covered with scenes in high relief, showing episodes from the life of St Alexander Nevsky, and has verses by Lomonosov engraved on its surfaces, there are a many-tiered pyramid, two pedestals displaying various articles of military equipment, and a pair of large candelabra. The abundance of decorative detail, and the asymmetrical, highly dynamic composition of this memorial reflect the influence of the Baroque which was dominant in Europe at the time.

The superb craftsmanship of Russian silversmiths is also exemplified by a collection of snuff-boxes, goblets, cups, pitchers, and other items decorated with niello, which were made for the most part in Moscow in the seventeenth century, and in Veliky Ustiug in the eighteenth.

The collection of enamels numbers approximately 500 items, of which those made in Veliky Ustiug in the eighteenth century deserve particular attention. From 1761 to 1776 the Popov factory there produced very beautiful and ingenious articles, such as large dinner services of silver and non-precious metals, completely covered with enamel, mainly white, and decorated with silver trimmings and delicate painting in silver.

The collection of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century jewellery comprises articles manufactured at the Fabergé, Sazikov, Ovchinnikov, and Grachov factories.

One of the most remarkable in the Hermitage is the distinguished collection of art objects in steel, made by the armourers of Tula. Of the five hundred such works recorded in various museums, three hundred are in the Hermitage. The collection contains articles of furniture, lighting fittings, vases, writing sets, perfume burners, caskets and coffers, snuff-boxes, and samovars. All these show the unrivalled skill and exquisite taste of the Tula craftsmen. The decorative effect of their work is based on the combination of ormolu and steel, either faceted to look like precious stones, or burnished blue, with its surface polished like a mirror. There are occasional examples of Tula steel in many museums all over the world, including those of London and Berlin.

The collection of artistic metalwork in bronze, tin, steel, iron, and cast iron has some interesting eighteenth-century examples of copperware: loving-cups, jugs, cups, large chased sconces with representations of the city arms of St Petersburg or of flowers, and also a tray made in 1723 at Yekaterinburg.

Decorative articles for the court — in jasper, malachite, lapis lazuli, agate, cornelian, porphyry, and rhodonite — were produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at the Peterhof, Yekaterinburg, and Kolyvan Lapidary Works. The Hermitage collection is the best in the Soviet Union and includes huge vases, bowls, elegant obelisks, lampstands, and a large number of smaller items, all done by gifted Russian craftsmen.

The collection of Russian furniture from the late seventeenth to early twentieth centuries boasts many fine items designed by the architects Charles Cameron, Giacomo Quarenghi, Vasily Stasov, Carlo Rossi, and Leo Klenze, as well as articles by the well-known St Petersburg cabinet-makers Christian Meyer, Heinrich and Piotr Gambs, Vasily Bobkov, and André Tour, and by craftsmen of the town of Archangel.

The Department possesses a very varied collection of walrus ivory, ranging from small pendants and spillikins to writing-desks, all made by bonecarvers from Kholmogory, well known for their skill in this art. The collection includes very rare items crafted by O. Dudin and N. Vereshchagin at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The delicate carving, openwork decoration, and original designs of the compositions are indicative of the great respect these masters had for the agelong traditions of their art.

There are many examples of the art of woodcarving: distaffs, round birch bark boxes, caskets of varying shapes, sizes, and ornamentation, gingerbread boards, ladles, salt-cellars, handled bowls, and other household objects.

The collection of textiles and costumes numbers over 20,000 items. The costume section contains many excellent examples dating from the late seventeenth to early twentieth centuries, each one a work of art in its own right. The textiles section comprises a rich assortment of Russian fabrics of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The world-famous Kolokoltsov shawls, for example, a type made only in Russia, were woven by serf craftswomen from very finely spun goat’s down on both sides (i.e. there is no wrong side on the finished cloth) and had ornamental floral borders, worked in an amazing variety of hues and tints.

The Hermitage is proud of possessing the largest collection of flags and banners in the world — about 6,500 items dating from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. They are interesting from both the historical and artistic point of view. In addition to Russian regimental colours, there are banners from Sweden, Prussia, France, and Oriental countries, as well as standards, Turkish horsetails, ensigns, insignia, and flags from over fifty countries. Old Russian banners are represented by a collection dating from the seventeenth century. The huge banner of the streltsi (the shooters) regiment, with an icon of the Last Judgment on one side, and portraits of the Tsars Peter and Ivan on the other, dates from the 1680s.

And, finally, one must mention the unique collection of sixteenth- to nineteenth-century instruments, which contains rare sundials and sidereal clocks, telescopes, drawing and geodetic instruments, including some made in the workshops of the Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Mikhail Lomonosov and Ivan Kulibin. Among the various serrated saws and copying lathes of Peter the Great’s time there is some interesting machinery with self-propelled supports of advanced design, whose invention is usually accredited to Andrei Nartov.

The Department’s exhibitions are supplemented by displays arranged in several state rooms of the Winter Palace. The Concert Hall (designed by Quarenghi in 1793 and rebuilt by Stasov in 1839 after its destruction by fire in 1837) — an interior faced with white stucco — houses an exhibition of seventeenth- to twentieth-century Russian silver. The famous Malachite Room (1838—1839, designed by Alexander Briullov), whose malachite decor is unique, is connected with the events of the October Revolution. Here the counter-revolutionary Provisional government held its meetings. On the night of 25—26 October (N. S. 7—8 November) 1917, the ministers were arrested in the room next door (the so-called Private Dining Room) by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. In 1957 the Private Dining Room was turned into a memorial room and furnished as it had been in 1917.

A special place among the state rooms belongs to the 1812 War Gallery which Alexander Pushkin made the subject of one of his poems. It was constructed to Carlo Rossi’s designs in 1826 and restored after the 1837 fire. The gallery contains 332 portraits of generals who took part in the 1812 War and the foreign campaigns of 1813—14. The pictures were painted by the English artist George Dawe and by the Russians Alexander Poliakov and Vasily Golike.

The Great Throne Room (designed in 1792—1795 by Quarenghi; rebuilt after the 1837 fire by Stasov) is decorated in a colour scheme of white and gold: white Carrara marble and gilded bronze. In 1948 a mosaic map of the Soviet Union, made from Russian coloured stones, was installed here. The room also houses an exhibition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century carved stones.

In 1980 the Palace of Alexander Menshikov, one of the closest associates of Peter the Great, was placed, after years of reconstruction and restoration, at the disposal of the Hermitage. Situated on the University Embankment, the Palace is a most interesting monument of the history and architecture of St Petersburg in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. It is planned to unfold here an exhibition devoted to the Russian culture of the Petrine period.

The first eleven halls are already open to visitors. They include a walnut room and four rooms in which the ceiling and walls are faced with Dutch tiles.

G. Komelova, V. Vasilyev

170

St Nicholas of Mozhaisk

Wooden sculpture. Russia. 17th century

171

Silver cup with enamel inlays

Russia, Solvychegodsk. 17th century

172

Bronze candelabrum

Russia. Mid-19th century

173

Lidded silver tureen

Russia. Made by the craftsman Kuzov. 1790

174

Carlo Bartolommeo Rastrelli. 1675—1744. Russia

Peter the Great. 1723—30

175

Glass goblet engraved with ships

Russia, St Petersburg. Imperial Glassworks. 18th century

176

Steel casket

Russia, Tula. Made by the craftsman Leontyev. Late 18th century

177

Ivan Chessky. 1777/82—1848. Russia

Spit of Vasilyevsky Island. Watercolour. 1817

178

Andrei Martynov. 1768—1826. Russia

View of Nevsky Prospekt from the Anichkov Palace

Watercolour. C. 1810

179

Dmitry Levitsky. 1735—1822. Russia

Portrait of Yakov Bilibin. 1810s

180

Karl Briullov. 1799—1852. Russia

Portrait of Sophia Bobrinskaya. 1849

181

Alexei Tyranov. 1808—1859. Russia

Interior of the Winter Palace Cathedral. 1829

182

Nikifor Krylov. 1802—1831. Russia

Portrait of Vladimir Apraxin. 1829

183

Peter Ernest Rockstuhl. Russia

Portrait of Alexander Osterman-Tolstoy. 1800s

184

Vase of ruby-coloured glass

Russia, St Petersburg, Imperial Glassworks. Mid-19th century

185

Steel samovar decorated with dolphins

Russia, Tula. Early 19th century

186

Silver ash-tray in the form of a dolphin

Russia. Made by Y. Rappoport, Fabergé firm. Late 19th or early 20th century

187

Silver vase (hock-cup) painted in enamel

Russia, Ovchinnikov’s firm. Late 19th century

188

Silver jug with swans

Russia. Made by the craftsman Grigoryev. 1825

189

Cashmere gown and Kolokoltsov-style shawl

Russia. 1820s

190

Porcelain figurines

Russia, St Petersburg, Imperial Porcelain Factory. Second half of the 18th century