With some two thousand items, the Hermitage collection of decorative bronzes is one of the best in Russia. Formed over the course of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, it is dominated in terms of both quality and quantity by French works of this period (some thousand items in all). There are fine mantle sets including clocks and candelabra, cartel wall-clocks, table decorations and centrepieces, desk sets and lamps. The collection also includes Dutch clocks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English long-case and table clocks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and several examples of clocks by Italian masters.
By and large the objects in the historic part of the collection come from the ceremonial rooms of the Hermitage and from the private apartments of former Russian imperial residences, supplemented by objects once displayed in the Gallery of Objects of Virtue or in the care of the Hofmarshal’s Department (the court’s service stores). The basis for the collection was laid in the reign of Catherine II, when objects were acquired directly from foreign merchants or imported from Europe to adorn ‘the Hermitage of Her Imperial Majesty’. Catherine’s most important such acquisitions include clocks with musical mechanisms produced in the workshop of David Roentgen, a French mantle clock with a sculpture of The Kiss Bestowed after Jean-Antoine Houdon, and all kinds of table decorations made from different coloured stones with ormolu mounts.
A distinct group is formed of commemorative items and pieces with a connection to the house of Romanov: the Chesma Desk Set by Augustin-Barnabé de Mailly, acquired by Catherine II in Paris through Baron Friedrich Melchior Grimm; a superb ensemble of clock and console with Cupid and Psyche as its subject by the famous French bronze-worker Pierre-Philippe Thomire, which once stood in Paul I’s Mikhail Castle; a monumental malachite rotunda by Thomire and the Italian stone-carver Francesco Sibillio, a gift to Nicholas I from Anatoly Demidov (Demidoff).
With fine examples of works by leading masters of the age of Louis XVI – Robert Osmond, François Rémond, Pierre-Philippe Thomire – the permanent display illustrates some of the greatest achievements of French Neoclassicism.
The different manifestations of the early nineteenth-century Empire Style are covered by the permanent exhibition Realms of the Eagle, on display in the General Staff Building. Amongst the most interesting pieces in this exhibition are official table decorations or centrepieces acquired for use at coronation festivities and other imperial banquets. Today the Hermitage has one of the world’s largest collections of such table decorations, most of them the work of the firm of Thomire: twelve plateaux and 77 other pieces in all. The French word for such centrepieces is surtout de table, which means ‘most important thing on the table’, and these gilded bronze decorations are grandiose ensembles composed of multiple objects, including vases, candelabra, flower and fruit baskets and tiered epergnes with crystal bowls set on mirrored plateaux, all in handsome bronze frames.
From the age of Historicism, which produced a wide range of mass-produced bronzes, we might particularly note the products of leading nineteenth-century French firms such as Ferdinand Barbedienne, Alphonse Giroux and Denier.
After 1917 the Hermitage collection of decorative bronzes was increased through the influx of numerous pieces from nationalised private collections. Many of them were once the property of Russia’s leading aristocratic families – the Princes Yusupov, the Counts Sheremetev and Shuvalov – or came from the country palaces of the imperial family in the area around St. Petersburg (Gatchina, Elagin Island, the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo).
Decorative bronze items of artistic and historical significance continue to be acquired today.
Anna Geyko
