Amber artefacts in the Kremlin Armoury

Wiesław Gierłowski

The Museums of the Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin, originally a fortified castle built on a hill by the River Moskva by Prince Yuri Dolgoruki in 1147, was expanded in the early 16th century and sheltered the seat of the rulers of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, regular army barracks, a grand armoury and several magnificent churches over a total area of 28 hectares, circled by walls with numerous gates and towers.

Today, the Kremlin is first and foremost the official seat of the President of the Russian Federation and part of the government. However, in reality most of the buildings are used by an institution called the MOSCOW KREMLIN MUSEUMS. Among the many museums which specialise in diverse subjects, the most popular is the GRAND ARMOURY (Russian: Оружейная палата – Oruzheynaya Palata), which no longer serves as an arsenal and an arms factory, but is a complex of rooms used for exhibiting the treasures collected over the centuries as gifts for the Grand Dukes of Moscow and later the Tsars of Russia.

There is no separate amber department at the Kremlin Armoury, even though one of the world’s largest collections of medieval and modern amber artefacts has been accumulated here. With over 100 magnificent, fully preserved pure amber artefacts and works of precious metals decorated with amber gemstones, the collection is the most important part of the so-called “Natural Artefact Department,” with objects made of organic substances, including pearls, shell, coral, bone, tortoiseshell, ostrich eggs, coconut shells and noble wood varieties.

Polish works in the Armoury’s collection

Most of the amber works in the Kremlin collection came as gifts from the Polish Crown and the envoys of the kings of Poland: almost all of them were accumulated between 1640 and 1680. These are works by distinguished Gdansk and Königsberg workshops, commissioned by specialists from the Polish royal court with due attention to both the magnificence of the pieces and sophisticated artistic form. The Moscow collection has works which are far earlier than those in the collections of the Hermitage in St Petersburgand Tsarskoye Selo because the new Russian capital by the River Neva was founded in 1703. Likewise, the works in the Armoury also predate those in large Western European collections such as the Vienna Museum of Art and the Berlin Craft Museum.

The high quality of the Moscow collection owes most to the impressive set of gifts sent by Polish king Ladislaus IV Vasa in 1645, when Moscow and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were allies and planned a joint campaign against the Turks. The group of royal envoys headed by Jozef Gabriel Stepkowski brought the following artefacts to Moscow:
- a chess table with a set of chess pieces
- a very large platter in a silver frame
- several magnificent cups
- a coffer
- a small chest of drawers with numerous amber souvenirs in its drawers
- a crucifixion scene (a Catholic Passion scene).

The amber crucifixion scene from the gift from Ladislaus IV was not the only Polish gift of sacral nature (delegations from other countries would not bring sacral objects). For instance, in 1667 Cyprian Pawel Brzostowski, envoy of King Jan Casimir brought a silver pectoral with a relief of Christ on the cross with the Virgin and St John in the middle.

Typologically, the two former objects are not unlike a statuette with an expressive crucifixion scene placed on an amber mandorla (an ogival plate, taken from the Italian word for almond nut). It depicts Christ and the two thieves on crosses with Mary and St John at the foot of the Cross. The Russian inventory emphasises that Christ’s feet are nailed to the cross with a single nail, in keeping with Catholic tradition, whereas Eastern Orthodox tradition has each foot nailed separately, parallel to each other.

Diplomatic contacts between Warsaw and Moscow were very intense at the time, and the custom to use such occasions to give valuable and unusual gifts led to the abundance and diversity of the amber artefacts for this purpose.

Limitations of space force us to forego mentioning the names of the envoys who brought the Polish gifts to the Tsar’s court. However, it is worth at least to mention the types of objects they brought. These included: chess sets, mugs, cups, writing sets, platters, coffers, cabinets, censers, and most often, candlesticks.

Some of them are depicted in the illustrations and described in detail below.

Crucifixion in a mandorla – height: 20,5 cm
An example of the numerous Polish sacral gifts. Gdansk handiwork. Pedestal made with a technique borrowed from coffer-making. The Golgotha scene in the front is rich in meaning and tasteful in means of expression: an illusion of depth achieved in bas-relief. The reverse has two scenes: the Resurrection and the Adoration of the Magi.

Gdansk candlestick – height: 21 cm
A slender, multi-part amber composition with ivory panels: openwork under the save-all and scenes from the Way of the Cross.

Baroque candlestick from Koenigsberg – height: 26 cm
The rich form of the stem and the base, with the use of classic ornamental forms, such as acanthus leaves. Just as the previously described candlestick from Gdansk, such candlesticks were made and given in pairs (of two).

Mug – height: 26 cm
Königsberg handiwork from the mid-17th century. Presented in 1645 by Jozef Gabriel Stepkowski, envoy of King Ladislaus IV, to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. The mug’s body, made of three fields of different colour amber is decorated with bas relief with cartouches and ornaments. The mug’s handle in the form of a stylised lion is typical of the work of the Königsberg masters. The amber parts are bound by a cast and repoussé gilded silver structure, which retains ornamentation common to the entire work. This is a rare example of the Polish royal court employing the services of Königsberg rather than Gdansk masters.

Platter – height: 15 cm, bowl diameter 18,3 cm
Comes from the same gift as the mug. Delicate intaglio sculpted parts of the bowl are carefully matched and encircled with a silver ferrule. This made it possible to skip the doubling of the amber layer, like in the walls of coffers made without wooden frames. The platter’s elegant base and stem are proof of the good taste of both sponsor and craftsman.

Russian works

Where the gifts from Poland, Germany and other western countries are typologically similar to artefacts known from other museum collections, the Russian works at the Armoury are surprisingly unique. For this reason I would like to especially focus on some of them:

Solovetsky panagia 7 x 4.5 cm with amber cameo
A panagia is an icon worn on the chest by Orthodox bishops. This one comes from a Russian workshop from the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries and is a very rare example of an Eastern Orthodox sacral object from that time with amber as its dominant material. In the centre of the octagonal composition is an oval amber cameo with an image of the Nierukotvorny Saviour i.e. “not created by hand,” sculpted with true virtuosity.
This depiction refers to the legend cited in the Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 325), whereby Christ created this image of himself by applying a cloth to his face to save the mortally ill Abgar, king of Edessa. This is why the image has only the face and hands. The setting (gilded silver, almandines, pearls) is also a testament to the outstanding mastery of the artist.
The panagia was made in the monastery in the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, which in the 16th and 17th centuries was an important art centre. This is the only example of such magnificent use of amber in this far-away place, which today is known as a symbol of Stalinist repression.

Moscow panagia – diameter 7,8 cm
This object was made in the late 16th century practically on-site. This was because, at the time, the Kremlin Armoury was not only an arsenal and the treasury of the Tsars, but also a complex of armourers’ and artists’ workshops, including goldsmiths. Pieces made of amber were a rare occasion here.
The panagia has a uniquely rich iconography, even though it was made with a relatively modest engraving technique: in its centre is the Theotokos (Greek: God Bearer = Mary), depicted as Hodegetria (Greek: She who shows the way), to her right is a guardian angel and St Nicholas; to her left is an Old Testament angel of the desert with an undetermined saint below. The images are explained with inscriptions in Old Church Slavonic. The red transparent amber composition was originally encircled by a ring of pearls, later replaced by glass pebbles.

Pectoral - 5,7 x 7,8 cm
From the late 17th century, probably Moscow handiwork. Sculpted in amber, the cross is set in gilded silver with cut rubies and emeralds. Next to the cross are the tools of the Passion, underneath is the head of Adam. The front and reverse have numerous inscriptions in the form of convex letters on a sunken amber background.

Conclusion

You can find a broader description of the Kremlin Armoury’s amber work collection in the Russian and English language catalogue of the exhibition of part of the collection presented in the Amber Museum in Kaliningrad in May 2008. Irena Zagorodniaja, the curator of Natural Artefact Department and the author of the exhibition catalogue presents the impressive collection from the Moscow Kremlin in an expert way and a with solid documentation base: in contrast to most European collections, the Moscow collection never relocated and from its beginning was officially documented by the Tsar’s chancellery. To a Polish amber lover and professional, this collection is especially important for its historical connotations.