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Item Number: 111636
Title: Il Tesoro del Cremlino
Author: Gorbatova, Irina ; Maria Sframeli
Price: Not Available
ISBN: 9788883476068
Description: Livorno: Sillabe, 2011. 28cm., pbk., 248pp. illus., numerous color plates. Exhibition held at Museo degli Argenti di Palazzo Pitti, Firenze. Summary: The Kremlin Palace in Moscow, the political heart of ancient Russia, houses the Armoury of the Grand Princes and the Tsars containing precious objects that belonged to the Emperors and mementoes connected with famous governors and statesmen. A fine selection is being presented at the Museo degli Argenti from May to September 2011 to mark the celebrations for the Italy–Russia Year. Other objects on display from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries come from the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Kremlin, including the precious icon known as the Madonna Bogoljubskaja and an extraordinary collection of Byzantine gems, which arrived in Moscow as a result of the close and constant relations with Constantinople, since the Moscow court was considered the legitimate heir of the Byzantine empire. Other treasures include works by the Russian masters from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. In the fourteenth century a vast complex of workshops, known as “palaty”, were set up in the palace of the Armoury of the Kremlin to produce the artefacts destined to the Court of the Tsar: the gold workshop (zolotaja palata), that of silver (serebrjannaja palata) and the workshop of the Tsarina (carycina palata), where the best gold seamstresses made and decorated magnificent garments for the family of the Tsar and the high-ranking ecclesiastical dignitaries. Harness and trappings for the horses and carriages were produced in the workshops, while the oldest and largest of all (oružejnaja palata) was devoted to the manufacture of arms. The ancient treasure of the Grand Princes of Moscow and of the first Tsars was lost following the tragic events that followed the death of Ivan the Terrible. His son, the Tsar Fëdor, died without heirs and the latter’s younger stepbrother Demetrio also died, possibly assassinated by Boris Godunov, who had been the de facto ruler of the State in his name and was then Tsar of Russia from 1598 to 1605. It was in these troubled times that various diplomatic activities were carried out, aimed at consolidating the relations between the Florentine court of the Medici and that of the Tsars of Moscow. The Grand Duke Ferdinando I sustained the important commercial mission of 1602, headed by the Livorno merchant Avraham Lussio, aimed at securing free trade in Russia and promising the same privilege to any Russian merchants arriving in Tuscany. In his second journey to Russia (1603) Lussio brought with him three precious vases in rock crystal, jasper and agate from the Medici collection, with the precise purpose of showing them ‘to the Emperor of the Muscovites.” In the years that followed, the new dynasty of the Romanovs reconstructed its own treasure hoard. As a result of the policy of openness towards abroad, the seventeenth century was one of the periods of greatest splendour in Russian art: foreign goldsmiths and armourers arrived at the Moscow court, bringing with them new techniques of workmanship and new models. Coloured enamels began to assume a preponderant role in the gold-working of the capital, as we can see in the extraordinary gold goblet that belonged to the Tsar Michail Fëdorovic, the only surviving artefact of this type. The museums of the Kremlin also house one of the most important collections of arms and armour in the world, and a collection of sixteenth and seventeenth European silverware that grew hand in hand with the consolidation of diplomatic relations with Europe.
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