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View the masterpieces of this collection Panoramic view of Hall 1 of
the Gold Rooms In Russia the collecting of gold objects belonging to the "barbarian" cultures of the Eurasian plains began in the years 1715-18. It was at that time that on the orders of Peter the Great Prince Matvei Gagarin sent to St Petersburg two hundred ancient gold artefacts that became known as the Siberian Collection of Peter I. The majority of these pieces that included magnificent belt plates and clasps bearing scenes of animals fighting, torques and bracelets, often adorned with turquoises, were bought from robbers of ancient graves. In the middle of the 19th century, the Siberian Collection was given to the Hermitage which is also where the Imperial Archaeological Commission, created in 1859 to seek out and study antiquities, sent the Scythian and Sarmatian artefacts from the steppes north of the Black Sea. The world-famous collection of Scythian works from the 7th-4th centuries B.C. consists mainly of finds made during the excavation of numerous burial mounds in the Kuban and Dnieper basins and the Crimea. Among the masterpieces of the Hermitage collection are gold shield ornaments (a deer from a burial mound near the Cossack village of Kostromskaya and a panther from the Kelermesskaya burial mound), a unique gold comb with a depiction of fighting warriors and a ritual bowl from the untouched burial in the Solokha mound, and also a silver vessel from the Chertomlyk mound that is decorated with ornament and splendidly executed reliefs depicting Scythians and their horses. View the masterpieces of this collection Panoramic view of Hall 1 of
the Gold Rooms |
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Copyright © 2011 State Hermitage Museum |
