Existing comment:
Case 6. Divine Images:
Religion played a significant role in prerevolutionary Russia, where official Russian Orthodoxy and court life intertwined. The religious objects shown here are said to have belonged to members of the aristocracy, including the last czar and czarina.
In Faberge's time, Russian icons (religious pictures used as objects of worship) still relied upon stylized compositions seen in Byzantine art as early as the sixth century AD. Examples shown here often feature elaborately wrought covers (oklads) of silver or gold embellished with enamels and sometimes studded with semiprecious stones. Such covers provide sparkling halos around the sacred images.
Worn by an Orthodox cleric, a panagia is a small icon worked into a jeweled pendant.
Pieces by a number of Russian firms are on view, indicating that the well-established demand for religious articles lasted until the Russian Revolution in 1917. The splendor of these hieratic images, made for the most part at the turn of the 20th century, reminds us that Russia remained in contact with her past while simultaneously adopting new styles and fashions championed by the imperial court at St. Petersburg. |