Reopening of the rooms of the culture and art of the Caucasus after restoration

In 2006 major repair and restoration work was carried out in the ground floor rooms of the Winter Palace with the aim of creating a new display for the Department of the East. To increase the display area certain changes were made to the architectural layout of the rooms. Two new doorways made it possible to produce a suite of display rooms in place of the original 18th-century corridor. The floor made of thin flagstones was uncovered and restored. In the course of this work elements of the lead pipes belonging to an early plumbing system were discovered and recorded. In one of the rooms a floor of marble slabs was created in imitation of floors typical of this part of the Winter Palace. The stone floors in the Orbeli and Piotrovsky memorial rooms were refurbished. During repairs to the windows traces of markings were found on parts of the frames that allowed them to be dated more precisely.

All the work was carried out by experts from the Hermitage's Special Scientific Restoration Production Workshops. Scientific methodological support and architectural-restoration supervision were provided by Andrew Zimin and Vladimir Yefimov from the museum's Department of the History and Restoration of Works of Architecture (headed by chief architect Valery Lukin) and technical supervision by the staff of the Hermitage's Department for Capital Construction (headed by Sergei Burdukov)

On 7 December 2006, part of the permanent display of the culture and art of the Caucasus was opened after restoration - four rooms presenting works of the culture and art of the Caucasus from the late 2nd and early 1st millennium B.C. (Room 55), the ancient state of Urartu that existed in the 9th-7th centuries BC in the area of Lakes Van, Urmia and Sevan (Room 56) and ancient and mediaeval Armenia and Georgia (Rooms 62-63).

The Room of the Culture and Art of the Ancient State of Urartu is dedicated to the memory of Boris Piotrovsky, an outstanding Orientalist and archaeologist, the founder of Urartology in Russia and director of the State Hermitage from 1964 to 1990. Excavations of Urartian fortresses in Armenia carried out under his leadership and publication of the material found there marked the start of the scientific study of the culture and art of this ancient kingdom. Between 1939 and 1971 Boris Piotrovsky headed the joint archaeological expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR and the State Hermitage that studied the ancient city of Teishebaini, the ruins of which were hidden beneath the Karmir-blur hill on the western outskirts of Yerevan. The bulk of the exhibits in the Urartu room entered the Hermitage thanks to those excavations.

Within the Teishebaini fortress that was founded in the 7th century BC by Rusas II, one of the last Urartian kings, more than 100 utility rooms were found in which, among other things, numerous clay vessels for the storage of grain, wine and beer were found. The site also yielded a huge quantity of bronze articles, hidden in storerooms, evidently during an enemy attack on the fortress: armour, arms, elements of horse harnesses and utensils (including some superbly preserved bronze bowls). Inscriptions from the 8th-century BC chased on these items indicated that they were older than the fortress itself. The inscriptions proclaimed that the kings of Urartu had donated these items to Haldi, the supreme god of the Urartian pantheon. Particularly noteworthy are the bronze figures of fantastic creatures on display in the centre of the room. These throne ornaments came from the ancient city of Rusakhi-nili (present-day Toprak-kale) that lay in the central part of the Urartian kingdom, not far from its capital Tushpa. These statuettes were acquired from private collectors in the late 19th century and are gems of the Hermitage collection of Urartian art.

The Room of the Culture and Art of Armenia is dedicated to the memory of Iosif Orbeli, an outstanding expert on the Caucasus and director of the State Hermitage from 1931 to 1954. The material in this room spans a very wide timeframe (1st-19th centuries), but the mediaeval period is the most varied and interesting.

An important part of the display is made up of illustrated manuscripts. Created both within Armenia and beyond its frontiers, they reflect artistic tendencies characteristic of different centres of manuscript production. Visitors can get an idea of the rich decoration of mediaeval Armenian architectural structures from fragments of monumental painting, reliefs, carved wooden capitals and doors on display. A considerable number of exhibits come from archaeological excavations carried out in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on the sites of the ancient Armenian capitals - the cities of Ani and Dvina, and also the fortress of Anberd.

A central place in the display is occupied by a masterpiece of artistic silver-working - the Skevra triptych reliquary. A verse inscription chased on the back of the central section informs us that the reliquary was made in 1293 to a commission from the abbot of the Skevra monastery as "a splendid repository for sacred relics". The names of several saints are preserved in the inscriptions. The reliquary has a wooden body overlaid with fine sheets of gilded silver bearing chased depictions of figures from the Old and New Testaments, saints and historical personages. The ornamental compositions and inscriptions placed around the figures give the work a look of refined completeness. The reliquary came into the Imperial Hermitage in 1885.

In the Room of the Culture and Art of Georgia the earliest items date to the first centuries of the Christian era and come from the two kingdoms that then existed on Georgian soil - Colchis and Iberia-Kartli. Among the masterpieces are the 3rd-century "Mtskheta goblet" discovered in 1871 during excavation of a grave in one of the necropolises of the ancient town of Mtskheta. This chased silver vessel, coated inside with glass, is decorated with hunting scenes and finished with great artistry. The bulk of the early artefacts are finds from the Bori burial ground (Kutaisi region) was plundered in the early 20th century. The articles date from the 2nd and first half of the 3rd centuries and include the celebrated "dish with a horse" whose last owner, judging by the inscription on its underside, was the Iberian ruler "Bozmihr pitiakhsh the Blessed".

The Room of the Culture and Art of Armenia
(mediaeval manuscripts)
Larger view