Millennium of Russian gold on display in United States
HOUSTON, Jun 01, 2000 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Russian treasures of gold and jewels, which survived centuries of upheaval and even the Bolshevik Revolution, will make their home in the United States for the next 11 months.
"Imagine, if in 700 years, the Smithsonian Institution packed up 140 of America's finest treasures and sent them to Russia for the Russian people to enjoy, then you'd see what they have done for us," says Jim Weaver, president of the board of directors of the Houston Museum of Natural Science where "Kremlin Gold: 1,000 Years of Russian Gems and Jewels" is on show.
The pieces will be shown only here and, starting in October, at Chicago's Field Museum. They return to Moscow at the end of March 2001 and will not travel again, according to Kremlin Museum director Irina Rodimtseva.
Seven years in the making, "Kremlin Gold" sprung from Houston museum president Truett Latimer and gem and jewel curator Joel Bartsch's idea to exhibit a single collection that spanned 1,000 years.
"The Kremlin is one of the only museums with extensive enough holdings to bring 1,000 years to us," Bartsch says.
Though most Americans recognize the Kremlin as Russia's political seat, the 633-year-old Moscow complex is also the cultural and historical center of the country. The State Historical-Culture Museum there has some 65,000 pieces in its collection and historical records.
The Houston exhibition is split into two galleries which cover far more than 1,000 years. The first focuses on pre-18th century, while the second represents Russian art from the 18th century to the present.
Common to most of the pieces is the signature metalwork, inlaid gemstones and religious icons, the last a result of a strong Byzantine influence on Russian art.
In 1557, Ivan the Terrible commissioned a gold frame, or oklad, to cover a painted wooden icon of the Madonna and Child. Considered the best example of 16th-century Russian goldsmithing, the bejeweled and filigreed frame now has only black velvet where the icons once sat. It took three years to complete.
More impressive in size is the golden sarcophagus cover of Prince Dmitry, Ivan's youngest son, who died at age 8 in 1591. The boy was canonized in 1603, and Czar Mikhail Feodorovich ordered a life-size image of him crafted in gold in 1630.
Kremlin artisans embellished the 65-pound (30-kilogram) cover with filigree, various jewels and small portraits of the family's patron saints, a common feature of religious Russian art. Only three such covers are known to exist.
"During Napoleon's invasion in 1812, the actual sarcophagus was lost, but a group of jewelers carried the cover outside of the city and hid it," says Kremlin curator Marina Martinova.
The silver shrine holding the boy saint's body has never been found, Martinova said.
Russians took great care to hide the country's prized artwork in times of war or invasion, "and would lay down their lives to protect them," she says.
Several of the pieces on display were recovered centuries after they were hidden or disappeared.
A braided gold bracelet and a gold necklace accented with cut glass, both dated from the 4th century and the oldest pieces on display here, were discovered by boys playing near their Black Sea homes in 1927. The works were believed hidden when the Huns invaded. When their father turned the treasures in to the government, he was rewarded with a horse - a prized possession in the harsh years of starvation that followed the October Revolution.
A 12th-century headdress adorned with silver kolts, or engraved medallions, was discovered in 1988 by workers installing cables underneath the Kremlin museum itself. Archaeologists believe the fur and silver headdress was stashed during the Tatar invasion in the 13th century.
Even though the gold and jewelry held at the Kremlin was symbolic of the excesses of the very aristocracy the Bolsheviks fought to overthrow, Russia's new rulers preserved them when they seized power in 1917.
But the Romanov family's collection of 54 Faberge eggs - perhaps the most famous pieces of Russian art - were considered extravagances and sold in the 1930s. Modern Russian art historians consider that a mistake. Only 10 are now in the country, the rest held by private collectors.
"When I first started as a tour guide 36 years ago, I was taught that the Faberge exhibit was nothing," says Irina Polianina, a Kremlin curator. "Step by step, we changed our understanding of it."
Two of the eggs are in the exhibit, one built to commemorate the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in 1900 and the other a 1909 tribute to the Romanovs' royal yacht, The Standart. Both were commissioned by Czar Nicholas II as gifts for his wife.
The fine detail on the eggs is almost too precise for the naked eye to see behind the glass cases.
The railroad egg contains a working miniature model of the very first train to ride the route, cut in gold and platinum and made to be folded to the size of a matchbook. The train's windows - smaller than an infant's fingernail - are made of quartz crystal, clear for most cars and dark for the smoking sections.
The Standart egg has 1,786 diamonds of varying size adorning a platform of gold, platinum and lapis lazuli. A precise finger-sized model of the 350-foot (105-meter) yacht rides on an ocean of quartz carved with waves breaking off the tiny vessel's bow.
---
On the Net:
Houston Museum of Natural Science's preview of "Kremlin Gold" exhibit:
By C. BRYSON HULL Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2000 Associated Press, All rights reserved
|
