Jewels! Glittering at the Russian Court

The Hermitage is one of the world’s largest museums and the collection of jewellery has a special status within it. It formed over the centuries as the imperial family’s and only the finest works of art found their way into it. As a consequence, the collection was the fullest and most diverse in Russia. The imperial collection contained the finest minerals from both an artistic and a mineralogical point of view. It is no coincidence that in Russian the words for “precious” and “jewellery” have the same root.

The display contains more than 300 exhibits, demonstrating the glittering life of the Russian court. It features masterpieces by Cartier, Lalique and Tiffany, the Russian court jeweller Fabergé and many other fine craftspeople. Sparkling diamonds and emeralds, rubies and sapphires in the exhibition demonstrate almost all types of precious stones. Pieces of jewellery,. magnificent costumes, ball gowns and other personal items, as well as a gallery of portraits all tell about two centuries in the history of Russian and Saint Petersburg high society. Visitors will learn about the life of the Russian emperors and empresses, first and foremost the mighty Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine the Great. The Russian empresses are joined by Anna Pavlovna, the daughter of Paul I, who was Queen of the Netherlands from 1840 to 1849. “Glittering” along with the Romanovs are aristocratic families of the 18th to early 20th centuries. All together they were national – and even international – fashion-setters.

An undoubted masterpiece in the exhibition is a bouquet of flowers made from precious stones that was created by Jérémie Pauzié. The Hermitage jewellery collection includes several bouquets made from precious and semiprecious stones. They differ in the place where they were made, the selection of minerals and decorative structure. Three bouquets, including the one featured in the exhibition, present similar motifs. For a long time, they were considered the works of some unknown craftsman of the middle of the 18th century, but later they were attributed by Marina Torneus, the keeper of the Hermitage collection, to Jérémie Pauzié. That notable figure was the most important jeweller working in Saint Petersburg in the mid-1700s and held the title of court jeweller. His clients included members of the imperial family, courtiers and the capital’s nobility. The stones making up the flowers in the bouquet are in the main enclosed in silver setting, while gold was used to make the stems and shoots. The craftsman used diamonds in a variety of ways: more than 400 brilliant-cut stones form the centres of flowers or petals, small rose-cut diamonds – over 450 in number – fringe the brighter minerals. It is those – blue and yellow sapphires, rubies, chrysolites, topazes and emeralds – that act as the main accents in the bouquet, forming the blooms and branches. Pauzié also used diamonds to mark out less significant minerals, such as garnets of various shades – pyropes, essonites and almandines. Even the semiprecious stones, which include agates, turquoise, cacholong and onyx, do not seem subsidiary. To add life and a little curiosity, the jeweller attached a little figure of an insect to the bouquet. It can be seen on the emerald branch.

The exhibition includes another incredible masterpiece – a jewellery box that is spangled with almost 400 variously coloured precious stones and cameos. The octagonal casket weighing around three kilos was made of gilded silver with nine oval sheets of rock crystal set into it, through which it was possible to view the contents. On the surface of the piece there is an ornamental pattern of silver covered with black and white enamel and completely embellished with stones of varying mineralogical value that have been worked in different ways. The majority of the stones, especially the large ones have a flat facetted table, or else are finished in the form of smoothly polished cabochons: jacinths, amethysts, citrines, turquoise and topazes. Four large, bright chrysolites stand out particularly. Here, as on many pieces from the late 17th century, the craftsmen used garnets of various shades: almost 400 stones, including pyropes and almandines, some of them backed with foil. The largest eight cabochon garnets are placed on the lid and at the bottom. The first-rate precious stones as a rule serve as decorative accents. Twenty-six bright rubies and two dozen emeralds are not large, but their role is obvious. Mention should also be made of the carved agates introduced into the decorative arrangement – they are cameos of varying size and artistic merits. They adorn the corners, the surface of the walls and the lid, and take the form of stylized portraits of Roman emperors, or anonymous profile busts of men and women, or else children’s heads. Although the casket bears no mark, typical features make it possible to attribute it as a work of Augsburg craftsmen from the late 17th century. This striking silver luxury article that combines a large number of different jeweller’s techniques, artistic enamel, numerous ways of cutting and polishing stones is a great adornment of the Hermitage’s jewellery collection.

A number of the items in the exhibition are linked by the theme of secrecy. These pieces include secret hiding places or else a coded message. Very varied in function, they are all closely connected with feelings and emotions. A large number of “secrets” in jewellery are connected with the feeling of love. First and foremost, there are medallions within which it was customary for a woman to keep a picture of her beloved and a lock of his hair. They take the form of little flat box with one or two hinged lids. Medallions can be of any shape, but the most common are oval or circular. This type of adornment has been known since earliest times but became especially popular in the 19th century. Pieces of jewellery with a secret have a close connection to their owners. Each item harbours stories connected with human feelings and emotions: love, desire, hatred, fear, a lust for power.

The impressive design of the exhibition’s display was inspired by the flickering play of light and colour in precious stones and also by monumental Saint Petersburg. Visitors receive the incredible opportunity to look into a treasury that contains the most luxurious works of jewellery that the State Hermitage has to offer. They follow a route that takes them through the most diverse scenes from the life of aristocratic society in years gone by – weddings, celebrations, private encounters. The people who owned these precious trinkets are long dead, but their secrets live on in them, stirring our imagination and making the pages of distant history come to life.

The exhibition curator is Olga Grigoryevna Kostiuk, head of the State Hermitage’s Department of Western European Applied Art.

A scholarly illustrated catalogue has been prepared for the exhibition in English and Dutch: Jewels! Glittering at the Russian Court.