On 16th May 2008 in the Kalingrad Museum of Amber they opened an exhibition of various antique objects made of materials of organic origin – mainly of amber, corals, pearls and shells collected by the Moscow Kremlin Museums – they constitute diplomatic gifts given to tsars centuries ago. A considerable amount of these gifts was given by diplomatic missions of Polish monarchs.
 In the years 1640 - 1680 there was an increase in diplomatic contacts with the Republic of Poland – the successive Polish monarchs: Wladyslaw IV, Jan Kazimierz, Michal Korybut and Jan III Sobieski at first wanted to limit an aggression of Moscow at the time of a Swedish and Cossack-Tatar invasions conducted by Bohdan Chmielnicki, and then to stabilize borders between the Republic of Poland and Russia. All the Polish amber gifts preserved until today in the Kremlin collections date back to these forty years.
These are the works of outstanding ambermen from Gdansk and Königsberg, sophisticated and designed with a talent without aiming at too large, ostentatious scale. Thanks to a thorough documentation kept in tsar’s treasure and foreign affairs offices, fully preserved until nowadays, we know the dates of these diplomatic missions and the names of royal envoys who ordered the gifts, stating precisely their artistic demands. We have the names and much more information about high and mighty and educated representatives of the Republic of Poland who placed the amber gifts in front of a tsar’s throne, and we should mention Gabriel Stepkowski, Cyprian Pawel Brzostowski and Jan Kotowicz.
This temporary exhibition in the museum in Kaliningrad, which was entitled “Alliance of Earth and Sea” will be open till 10th August this year. Since the middle of June one can also see there a catalogue with colourful photos and a thorough description of the collection prepared by Irina Zagorodnaya, a custodian of the “naturalia” department. She is the person who presented the exhibition to an audience from Kaliningrad (and partially from Gdansk, taking part in the opening of the exhibition). An introduction in the catalogue was written by Elena Gagarina – General Director of the Moscow Kremlin Museums.
Amber.com.pl portal is going to present at greater length the amber works from the Moscow collection in regular columns, also works from Ermitage and Tsarskoe Selo, but it will only be possible after the catalogue of the Kaliningrad exhibitions is published (by the way – the first one which describes amber works so thoroughly). Before the exhibition opening I was permitted to take photos under the condition that I would postpone their publication until the catalogue is published, with the exception of some general photos of display cabinets and an opening ceremony.
I encourage ambermen and art historian from Gdansk to take up this not too expensive and arduous journey to Kaliningrad.
Photos: A display cabinet with bowls and a beer mug made in Königsberg (above); a display cabinet with candlesticks, also from Gdansk – with white cups made of ivory (below). Photos by Wieslaw Gierlowski 2008-05-30 |
