The Department of Western European Applied Art has around 1000 medieval works dating from the fifth to fifteenth centuries. At its core is a series of objects acquired for the Imperial Hermitage as part of the collection of Alexander Basilewsky in 1885. After 1917, the collection further increased, largely thanks to objects transferred from the museum of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and the influx of the private collections of Mikhail Botkin, the Counts Shuvalov and Stroganov. Most significant of all was the large body of pieces from the museum of the Central School of Technical Drawing of Baron A.L. Stieglitz. By the 1930s the Hermitage had a magnificent collection, although it suffered serious losses when the state ordered the sale of some two dozen of the most superb pieces.
Most of the exhibits in the collection today – which comprises items made of precious metals and copper alloys, ivory, wood, leather, textiles and embroidery – date from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.
Western European ivories are well represented. The Romanesque section includes masterpieces such as plaques from the reliquary shrine of San Millán de la Cogolla, while the Gothic section is notable for statuettes of the Virgin and Child and plaques from a casket with scenes from the story of Tristan and Isolde.
There is a notable collection of enamels, including about a hundred Limoges pieces of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, among them the famous reliquary of St. Valeria. But there are also works from other northern schools of the twelfth century and Italian and Spanish translucent enamels on silver dating from the fourteenth and fifteen centuries.
Of considerable interest is a group of bronze aquamanile produced between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries: most of them take the shape of lions but they also include a number of unique pieces. Two of the latter were found on Russian territory, one in the form of a knight and dragon and another in the form of a man’s head.
While most of the objects are displayed in the Romanov Gallery of the Small Hermitage, two key masterpieces that are among the greatest treasures of the collection of fine metals are to be seen in the Treasure Gallery (the Diamond Room): the Romanesque reliquary in the form of a figure of St. Stephen and the Gothic processional cross of St. Trudpert.
Ekaterina Nekrasova
