The handing over of two relics – the shrine of Alexander Nevsky and Rublev’s Old Testament Trinity – to the Russian Orthodox Church from the State Hermitage and the Tretyakov Gallery respectively has aroused strong public reaction ranging from unqualified approval to equally uncompromising condemnation. How was the decision taken with respect to the exhibit from the Hermitage? What is life like for the Hermitage under changed circumstances?
The museum’s Director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, talks about that in an interview with Vitaly Dymarsky.
– Mikhail Borisovich, first of all thank you for agreeing to answer our questions, which can’t be classed as easy. Let’s start with a formal one. How did the decision-making process happen? What is the procedure for handing over the shrine of Alexander Nevsky to the Russian Orthodox Church?
– There are two key words in your question – “process” and “procedure”. Decisions of any kind can only be taken within the context of particular laws and rules. That was true for Alexander Nevsky’s tomb too. Incidentally, the word shrine [raka] is only used for the casket containing the relics, while the structure around that is an enormous tomb. We need to proceed from an understanding that all the things that are in the museum belong to the state and are a part of the museum fund of the Russian Federation, which is managed by the government of the RF. The handover of the tomb does not entail its exclusion from the museum fund and is, accordingly, subject to a whole set of requirements, including the Unified Rules for Record-Keeping and Storage. And the decision was taken to partially hand it over to the day-to-day administration of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery with monitoring by the Hermitage.
Talks about this have been going on for a long time and at various levels. On this occasion, the initiative came from Patriarch Kirill, who sent a request to the Minister of Culture with a reminder that the shrine was created for the monastery. After that, the Ministry of Culture contacted the Hermitage, asking us for two things: a complete account of the conditions in which the tomb needs to be kept (it is as yet only partially restored) and our consent, or non-consent, to the handover.
We gave our consent. On that basis, the Ministry issued orders to conclude an agreement to that effect. That was signed by Metropolitan Varsonofy of Saint Petersburg and Ladoga, and myself, as Director of the Hermitage, then confirmed by the Minister of Culture and the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. It’s a very long document. Appended to it is an enormous list of the various conditions and requirements for the upkeep of that whole complex. The most important point is that the tomb is being handed over to the Church’s keeping free of charge for a period of 49 years. In the event of all conditions being observed, the agreement is automatically prolonged. If the conditions, which are an inseparable part of the agreement, are breached, the agreement may be cancelled.
– Does the museum retain the right to check and monitor?
– Certainly. Everything is laid out in detail, including the conditions for holding services. In particular, it is specified that until conditions for the tomb’s safe existence are created it will not be going anywhere. Now painstaking work is underway to produce such conditions. Glass capsules are being prepared for the various parts of the whole ensemble. The temperature and humidity conditions are already being monitored.
In effect, the Hermitage is displaying one of its exhibits in the monastery, where the relics will be placed inside it. It’s not fitting for those to be kept in the museum.
– The shine (or tomb) is an artistic masterpiece. It’s one thing to provide access to it in a museum that receives thousands of visitors every day, but a different matter in a church…
– On the one hand, that’s true, but on the other we in the Hermitage have never permitted any collective acts of public prayer, except those that take place in our own church, where they are conducted by our priest. So, the accessibility will, of course, not be the same as in the Hermitage, but for the purposes of worship, it will be greater than with us.
– Mikhail Borisovich, how, though, were you, a museum professional, Director of the Hermitage, head of the Union of Museums of Russia, able to come to such a decision? After all, this wasn’t the Church’s first attempt to get the tomb of Alexander Nevsky moved. You always managed to resist, in some instances by suggesting compromise approaches, such as making a copy of the tomb. Why didn’t that work this time?
– No, it was not an easy decision to reach, and I have indeed always been against the handing over of the tomb. But there are moments in history when the religious aspect outweighs artistic value. After all, a whole number of works of art, above all ecclesiastical art, have a dual significance. And that applies not just to icons. Right now we are in such a moment, and the relics should act as an appeal to believers. And there’s one more argument: disruption of social concord is too great a luxury for Russia to afford today.
I have always been against the expression “return of the shrine”. We did not take it away from anyone – we saved it for a hundred years. Saved it on four occasions! Twice we snatched it from the grasp of a state that intended to melt the tomb down, once we saved it from the war, and a fourth time we are saving it from the effects of time, since it was in a precarious condition, badly in need of healing, of restoration.
What we are talking about today is not a returning, but a handing over. It is a gesture of good will, because in the present situation Alexander Nevsky should perform his role as protector of Russian forces and Russian diplomacy. Let me point out that in the General Staff building, which housed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there was a Church of Alexander Nevsky, since he is also the patron saint of diplomacy. All you hear is “It’s a sacred object, a sacred object!” For a hundred years, we bore responsibility for it. Let’s share it now with the Church.
– It’s often possible to hear, especially among the museum community, that decisions of this sort might become a precedent, opening Pandora’s box.
– That’s a very important question. Only Pandora’s box has already been opened! And that is part of the worldwide process, particularly of the post-colonial period. People shouldn’t imagine that we alone in Russia opened it. Some really crazy things are happening, When there were discussions about the German collections removed to Russia, I was saying “Don’t open Pandora’s box; you will all be found to have secrets in your trunks!” – and collections stolen from Jewish owners by the Nazis have indeed been discovered in those trunks around the globe.
As for the ecclesiastical Pandora’s box. Questions of the restitution of this or that treasure should be decided individually, in respect of each separate item, whether it’s a shrine, a painting or whatever. Look, we have varied experience. For example, the icon of Our Lady of the Don is regularly taken from the Tretyakov Gallery for services and back again, and nothing happens to it. In the Don Monastery the iconostasis is monitored by the Historical Museum. In general, it should be said, the Historical Museum has built up good experience of interaction with the Church and the joint keeping of treasures. But there are unsuccessful handovers, as was the case with the Toropets or Bologliubovo icons. Meanwhile we even allowed our Hermitage Novgorodian icon of Saint Nicholas the Miracle-Worker to go to Italy, to a Catholic church, and people venerated it there.
So, such a practice already exists. It can be both good and bad. There are issues: you have to regulate them. And to realize that it should not be a case of hand one thing over and off it goes! Now it’s give, give and give again! Each time, there should be an individual decision based on principle. A government-level decision. Nothing less.
Look what decolonization is turning into – the cancellation of museums. Museums are supposedly holding stolen goods. France is giving back the Benin bronzes. Egypt is demanding the return of the Rosetta Stone from Britain and Greece the Parthenon marbles… What used to be termed wonderful cultural borrowing is now described as “cultural appropriation”. You get people saying: “You’re taking our culture, exploiting it, making, let’s say, some kind of skirts with Chinese or Ancient Egyptian designs and in doing so you’re appropriating our culture and distorting it. And that’s criminal!”
Then comes attribution – who and what belongs to whom? Is it Aivazovsky the Armenian? Or Aivazovsky the Ukrainian? Or Aivazovsky the Russian? What about Xinjiang? Is it ancient Eastern Turkistan, or do we have to say that it’s a region of China? Arabian Gulf or Persian Gulf? And so it goes on. There is an insane number of such attributions, and at times something will “blow up”.
Then comes restitution and repatriation. Everyone in the world is demanding restitution – churches are asking for it, so are countries that belonged to various empires. They demand various things – archaeological artefacts and religious ones. Then private art collectors and their heirs make their appearance… Pandora’s box was opened long since.
– Is the legal basis for these processes understood? Are any additional instruments needed?
– They certainly are needed! There’s the issue of protecting museum collections. A proposal exists for amendments to the Law on the Museum Fund that will provide protection for museum collections. I have been working on that proposal for a year and half already. Previously, in Soviet times, you’d get a telegram saying, “Give up this or that painting”. People would give it up and it got sold abroad. Just marvellous, and there was no way of guarding against that. In the post-war period, a number of pieces of legislation did then appear and the Law on the Museum Fund that defined under what circumstances things can be taken away from a museum where they are in day-to-day keeping. Then that was all superseded by the Civil Code.
Now we have put forward amendments that would place a whole number of obstacles to expropriation. You cannot ban expropriation altogether, and the state does have such a right, but there need to be restrictions on that right. Those kind of amendments – from the Hermitage and the Union of Museums – are in the State Duma, and I hope that they will be passed. As well as definitions of what is called a museum, who can call themselves a museum and who may not.
– In Russia the context around culture and values is changing. The trend is towards a radical conservatism that looks more to the past than to the future. But what is to happen with contemporary art that the Hermitage and you personally have always promoted?
– Besides my being a fan of contemporary art, people also consider me an advocate of imperial aesthetics and imperial Russia. So, I am under attack from all sides.
Yes, we are not able to bring in the art that is being produced today in the West, but we do have the “cloud”, and there we can show it, and interact, and hold joint exhibitions. Just how, we don’t know yet. For the moment, we are discussing and working out the means. There is a whole range of ways of interacting through the creation of works of contemporary art using the latest technologies. Those include NFTs and holography. I can’t tell you everything because I still haven’t mastered the vocabulary myself yet.
The restoration of works of contemporary art is an important topic because it perishes in an instant. We are currently restoring Kabakov’s Red Wagon, which is in our keeping, and making a whole line of discussion and experiments out of that.
We have created a new School of Arts. The main thing now is the new generation. Our generation stood up to the previous crises, and we need to bring up people in such a way that they will be prepared for new crisis situations.
So, there are various points for applying forces. Now everyone is starting to divide up into national camps, and such division and isolation is taking place around the world. What generally can be done about that? All our problems are a part of worldwide problems: what about international art? Contemporary art is no longer markedly international. Africa’s new art is very interesting. It also gets written about in the spirit of anticolonial sentiment, along the lines of “They already stole the old African art from us, and now they are spending large sums buying contemporary African artists and taking their works away to the West, to Europe and America, and those won’t remain in Africa either.”
– Are relations with the public changing? In many things they feel themselves to be the judge nowadays: is that good, is that bad, and properly speaking that’s a matter for the Investigative Committee…
– At one point I wrote an article about denunciations. Unfortunately, it’s a national genre. Such a practice of “signals” probably exists everywhere, but in Russia it is particularly widespread. Meanwhile, people in power differ: some are obliged to react to it – those are the rules for them, while others are very keen to react – they find it interesting. We have long years of experience of such matters, but you need to know how to react to that as well. It’s an ethical problem.
– When the guns speak, the muses keep silent. What should the Hermitage and other museums do? What should you prepare for?
– Quite the opposite. We have great experience of life in wartime conditions. We do not forget that either, regularly holding exhibitions, telling people about the evacuation of the Hermitage, about its existence during the siege years. We know what to do in such situations. We also know that art should at one and the same time be both protected and exalted. A museum should be a symbol of something eternal, of what lies above the immediate situation. How can those things be combined? Later we will write books about it. For the moment, we are working.
We have just opened an exhibition devoted to the children of the imperial family – “OTMA”. Now let’s have everyone know that OTMA means Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia. A very moving exhibition of childhood things from Tsarskoye Selo and the Hermitage, with almost no mention of Tsarevich Alexei’s illness or their tragic death.
Another exhibition – “Russian Style” – is about how that style came into being. We don’t always remember that it was in reaction to Peter and Catherine. We are preparing an exhibition of “Emperors and Knights”, about Nicholas I’s fascination with chivalry. That’s from our collection of mediaeval art. It will tell about how they became a part of the aesthetic and political upbringing of Russia’s elites. There will also be a major exhibition of Old Believer icons from the Pomorian community and about Old Believer culture in general.
Those are indirect answers to the question of what a museum like the Hermitage should be doing in this situation. We should speak simply about some things and draw attention to some complex matters. On the one hand, we need to calm people down, on the other to make them think.
That kind of art therapy.
The Small Shrine
After the fires of 1681 and 1689 at the Monastery of the Nativity of the Virgin in the city of Vladimir, a new shrine was made for the relics. It was created in 1694–95 by the Moscow master silversmith Nikifor Pshenichny and his “assistant(s)” funded by Hierodeacon (a monk ordained as a deacon) Bogolep, the keeper of the patriarchal vestments and vessels, who was born in Vladimir. In memory of their son Alexander, who died in infancy, Tsar Peter and his first wife Tsarina Eudoxia, donated gold and cherry-coloured velvet to line the casket. In 1697, Metropolitan Illarion of Suzdal transferred the saint’s relics to the “newly-built gilded silver shrine”. The shrine is a large wooden casket, the upper edge of which carries a silver plate bearing the chased inscription: “Placed in this gilded silver shrine are the sacred relics of the Pious, Christ-Loving Prince Alexander Yaroslavovich…” It was in this shrine dating from 1695 that Saint Alexander Nevsky’s relics were moved to Saint Petersburg in 1723–24. Later it was placed inside the new silver shrine.
The Great Shrine
This was made in the years 1747–52. The court artist Georg Christoph Groot produced the design for a large-scale structure following the traditions for the creation of monumental reliquaries that came to Russia from Catholic lands. The sketches for the bas-reliefs on the walls of the construction were made by Jakob Stählin.
Ninety poods (1500 kilos/3300 pounds) of silver with a purity of 82 parts in 96, smelted at the Saint Petersburg Mint, was requested for the making of the ensemble. Work on the silver elements of the new shrine began in 1749. On 30 August 1753, the creation of the huge monumental structure was finished.
It weighed 89 poods, 22 (Russian) pounds, one and a third zolotniks. The entire work cost the treasury 80,244 roubles 62 kopecks (i.e., one pood of silver in the work cost 906 roubles 56 kopecks). (1 zolotnik is equal to 4.266 grammes.)
The immediate creators of this masterpiece of the jeweller’s art were all foreign silversmiths. A Russian team only did the chasing work.
In the middle of the second tier of the pyramid there is a bas-relief of Alexander Nevsky holding a banner. The side walls of the sarcophagus carry narrative reliefs depicting the most important events in his life: victory over the Swedes on the Neva in 1240; the battle with the Livonian knights on Lake Peipus in 1242; his entry into Pskov and liberation of the city (that same year); a scene of the prince’s death and burial in 1263. The south side of the sarcophagus is adorned by a medallion containing an epitaph composed by Mikhail Lomonosov.
