By Ian MacKenzie
EDINBURGH, July 13 (Reuters) – Empress Catherine the Great
demonstrates her powerful and enduring cultural influence over
Russia in a new art exhibit at Scotland’s National Museum that
opened on Friday.
The Edinburgh museum’s show in collaboration with the
Hermitage museum is overflowing with incredibly rich and rare
pieces related to the 18th century Russian ruler, including a
freshly restored giant coronation portrait of Catherine that has
not been on public display since the Russian revolution in 1917.
The exhibition falls on the 250th anniversary of the coup
d’etat in which Catherine’s unloved husband Tsar Peter II was
killed and she started her 30-year reign as empress and sole
ruler of a rapidly rising Russia. It runs through the Edinburgh
festival season to October 21.
“Catherine the Great: An Enlightened Empress” is the third
major exhibition the Scottish museum has put on in close
conjunction the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, which has provided
a treasure trove of over 600 artefacts from its own collection.
The exhibit emphasises Catherine’s role in enhancing the
legacy of Peter the Great, whose rule from 1682 to 1725 brought
Russia into the European family.
Asked the value of the display, Hermitage director Mikhail
Piotrovsky told Reuters it ran into “many millions of pounds”.
It brings together an extraordinary range, including
paintings, documents, jewellery and porcelain, Catherine’s
hunting weapons, fabrics and furniture and even a highly ornate
and gilded winter sleigh the empress used.
Born into minor German nobility in 1729, by the time of her
death in 1796 “Russia had become a true world power, with
expanded borders, reformed church and state, hugely developed
military and industrial capabilities and a glittering court that
was the envy of Europe,” the Edinburgh museum notes said.
The exhibition also covers the influence of Scots in the
Russian court, from positions as doctors at the imperial court
to their influence on architecture, industrial development and
the rapidly expanding Russian navy.
On a broad scale, Catherine was a leading figure in the 18th
century European enlightenment and a correspondent with leading
figures such as Voltaire and Diderot, whose libraries she
purchased.
Her agents scoured Europe for collectable items, which laid
the foundation of the Hermitage itself as one of the world’s
greatest museums.
Piotrovsky said Catherine and the exhibition “is very
important to us for explaining what Russia is and what Russian
culture is. It’s a story perfectly told, the story of a ruler
who developed the testament of Peter the Great to make Russia a
great country, to make Russia great.”
(Editing by Paul Casciato)
