The State Hermitage Museum: Exhibitions

Easter Egg Bearing a Depiction of the Madonna with a Book after the Painting by Carlo Maratti

1860-70

Imperial Porcelain Factory, St Petersburg

Porcelain, polychrome overglaze painting, muffle-kiln colours and enamels, gilding with selective polishing and matting

Height: 10.9 cm

On the one side of this cobalt egg, in an oval gilded frame is a depiction of the Virgin Mary reading a book; on the other a richly ornamented cross designed by the architect Alexander Kaminsky to a commission from the Imperial Porcelain Factory for the enhancement of Easter eggs decorated with figurative painting.

The egg was painted from an engraving after Carlo Maratti’s The Madonna with a Book, a painting that entered the Hermitage collection between 1763 and 1774.