Russian romanticism and the Armory Chamber”

The exhibition “Legends of the Kremlin: Russian Romanticism and the Armory Chamber” is being held at two exhibition sites of the Kremlin Museums – in the Patriarchal Palace and the Assumption Belfry. Despite the standard name, few exhibitions in Moscow in recent years can compare with it – both in intrigue and quality, he believes Alexey Mokrousov.

The first thing you see when entering the Assumption Belfry of the Moscow Kremlin is two thrones. The one on the right, trimmed with white ivory and walrus ivory, is empty. Ivan the Terrible sits on the throne on the left: this is the famous sculpture of Antokolsky, who used the throne from the Armory Chamber as a model; it was believed that Ivan the Terrible actually sat on it. The legend owes its origin to the staff of the chamber of the 19th century, who described the throne as “a Greek chair of the most ancient work” – supposedly the Greek ambassador presented it to Ivan III Vasilyevich on the day of his wedding with Sophia Paleologus. But this description is not based on anything, it has been refuted in our days.

There are many similar fake exhibits at the exhibition – here are “children’s armor of Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy”, “helmet of St. Alexander Nevsky”, “helmet, bracers and shield of Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich”, “saber and chain of Grand Duke Vladimir Monomakh”, “helmet Grand Duke Yuri Vsevolodovich”, “staffs of Andrei Bogolyubsky and Ivan Kalita”. All of them were created much later than originally thought – for example, the “Monomakh hat of the second outfit” was considered the “crown of Grand Duchess Olga”; it was supposedly worn by Ivan the Terrible “on smaller occasions.” In fact, it was made in 1682 for the double coronation of young Peter I and his brother Ivan Alekseevich.

Clarification of attribution sometimes only led to the replacement of the myth. “Legend” signs, a reminder of false descriptions, are placed next to the labels of many exhibits. But in the minds of the public, the myths were maintained for many decades by guides who led tours of the Armory as early as the 1840s, when the first guidebooks appeared. The organizers were preparing an exhibition about “how fiction and reality intertwine in the history of unique monuments”; Like any good exhibition, it turned out to be broader, which makes it one of the best projects of the year. “Legends of the Kremlin” reminds us that the public likes to be deceived, and many years of efforts to dispel myths only led to changes in scientific catalogs, but not in the viewers’ heads. The wave of patriotism after the victory of 1812 aroused interest in history; In many ways it was of a speculative nature; mass ideology did not always value the truth in information about the past.

Formally, the Armory Chamber was founded as a museum in the Kremlin in 1806 by Emperor Alexander I, but it flourished during the next reign. Nicholas I cared not only about filling the chamber with new objects, but also about scientific life, descriptions of exhibits, verification of authenticity and dating by commissions. One of the curators of the exhibition, Fyodor Panfilov, admitted to Kommersant that during the work he largely changed his attitude towards Nicholas I – he showed himself to be a connoisseur of history.

The emperor loved the life of a knight, especially ancient armor. His contemporaries indulged him as best they could – in the early 1830s, the Zlatoust arms factory produced spectacular “Ancient Weapons” armor for the heir to the throne, Alexander Nikolaevich. Today they would be called “fusion”: a mixture of ancient Roman and knightly looks combined images of ancient mythology and state symbols of the Russian Empire. Nicholas accepted the gift and rewarded the craftsmen, but a century later, under the Bolsheviks, the armor was returned to Zlatoust, where it is kept in the local history museum with the status of “monument of science and technology of Russia” – it is assigned by the Expert Council at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum.

In addition to the Chrysostom Museum, a dozen Moscow and St. Petersburg collections are participating in the exhibition, which brought together 130 exhibits, including the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. A. S. Pushkin, Historical Museum, Tretyakov Gallery and St. Petersburg Museum of Theater and Musical Art; the main attention, of course, is paid to the collection of the Armory Chamber itself.

A special place in the hall of the Patriarchal Palace is occupied by objects related to knights and chivalry, which played in the dreams of people of the romantic era approximately the same role as today Pokemon or – scary to say – computer games. Collecting was combined with an interest in history, and the possession of ancient objects was combined with an attempt to adopt knightly ideology in a new, modernized way.

Many relatives of the imperial family, both in Germany and in England, were fond of knightly extravaganzas. Among the exhibits is a silver award badge “Order of the Rose”, made according to the sketch of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. It was awarded to participants in a costumed medieval knightly tournament held on her birthday in Potsdam in 1829.

The love for the knightly surroundings was worth the sacrifices. On May 23, 1842, on the occasion of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the august marriage, participants in the carousel (the so-called knightly festival without real fights) in Tsarskoye Selo put on authentic European armor of the 16th century from the Tsarskoye Selo arsenal – Maximilian, or grooved. They can be seen in the group portrait of the emperor’s family – the exhibition features an engraving by Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazay from the collection of the State Historical Museum, made from a picturesque original by Horace Vernet, stored in Tsarskoye Selo. Since the armor was made to order each time, for a specific figure, and the body acted here as a unique QR code, it was no longer possible for others to wear it. The guests of the Tsarskoye Selo carousel suffered, it was a dubious pleasure to prance in such armor, and the emperor himself, a contemporary wrote, almost suffocated while trying to put on his helmet. But if it hadn’t worked out, look, the history of Russia would have looked different. But the history of the Armory would still have to be rewritten.