The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT

temporary exhIbItIons
of soldiers’ snuffboxes made of copper and tin, intended
for storing tobacco in campaign conditions. Gold and silver
snuffboxes, decorated with precious stones, were used
not only for their main purpose, but also served as valuable
gifts, equal in significance to medals and orders.
The exhibition also featured snuffboxes that belonged
to the Russian Emperors Peter I and Peter II, Empresses
Anna, Elizabeth and Catherine II, and the European monarchs
Augustus the Strong, Frederick the Great and Louis
XV. They were gold boxes with portraits, monogrammes,
and compositions on allegorical and historical themes.
They were made by leading European masters, and by the
end of the 18th century snuffboxes had become collector’s
items. The Hermitage’s collection of snuffboxes is one
of the best in the world.
Throughout the century the sniffing and chewing of tobacco
had also been accompanied by smoking, which in
the 19th century eclipsed the other practices and became
the widespread habit that is still popular today. Tobacco
smoking led to the manufacture of cigars, cigarettes and
varieties of them, and special containers were made for
storing them – cigarette cases and cigar boxes. These were
represented in the exhibition by the works of masters from
many Western European countries, as well as Russia.
One of the most romantic habits was pipe smoking.
The exhibition included several clay pipes found during
excavations on the territory of the Winter Palace in 2006.
They have come down to us in a fragmentary condition,
but their importance is in that they belonged to the first
builders of St. Petersburg. Their simple design contrasts
The immorTal alexander The greaT.
The myTh. The realiTy. hiS Journey.
hiS legacy. hermiTage
Hermitage ∙ Amsterdam Exhibition Centre
18 September 2010 – 16 March 2011
This was the first time that an exhibition devoted to Alexander
the Great, his Eastern campaign and the subsequent
influence of Hellenism on world artistic culture was
staged in the Netherlands. The display encompassed a period
of over 2,500 years – from the 5th century B.C. to the
20th century. The project was a version of the exhibition
Alexander. Road to the East held in the Hermitage in 2007.
The main subject of the exhibition was the myth of Alexander,
his Eastern campaign and its consequences for the
West and for the East. It described the meeting of the great
civilizations – the Hellenic world, the ancient empires of
the East and the world of the nomadic peoples; how the
process of Hellenization began everywhere Alexander
went – Greek art and architecture, the Greek language
and way of life spread everywhere. This influence affected
a huge area from Greece to India, as far as Mongolia and
with the high artistic standard of the pipes made for members
of the Imperial family. The sizes of the pipes, as well
as the materials from which they are made, the subjects
of the painted and carved decoration, are extremely varied.
Pipes were supplemented by ashtrays and matchboxes,
lighters, and stands and boxes of various shapes.
From the time tobacco first appeared in Europe, masters
have created a wealth of various items for its storage and
use – not only utilitarian, but sometimes exquisitely expensive.
Many of them, by virtue of their high artistic merit,
have become genuine masterpieces of decorative applied
art and monuments of an era.
By Olga Kostyuk
other states beyond the boundaries of Ecumene (the world
known to the Greeks). Attention was focused on the historic
role of Alexander for the future of Western Europe,
Russia and the East, and Hellenism as a global process of
the interaction of civilizations and cultures.
The first section of the display highlighted the myth of Alexander
in the art and culture of Western Europe in the
modern age. Among the sixteenth – nineteenth-century
works based on the ruler’s life, exploits and triumphs were
paintings by Sebastiano Ricci (Apelles Painting a Portrait
of Campaspe) and Pietro Antonio Rotari (Alexander the Great
and Roxana), the tapestry Alexander and the Family of Darius,
as well as items of armaments and armour made in
imitation of ancient ones. The visitor was then plunged
into the atmosphere of antiquity in which the young conqueror
grew up. The account began with the art of Classical
Greece in the period preceding the great Eastern campaign.
The display included Italian and Attic vases with
themes from Homer’s Iliad, which served as a “textbook of
valour” for Alexander. Particularly eye-catching were the
colossal statues of Heracles and Dionysus, the mythological
heroes who were Alexander’s “guiding stars”.
A separate section was devoted to the semi-barbarian culture
of the Balkans: the exhibits depicted the way and style
of life of the Macedonians, armaments and funeral items.
Undoubtedly of great interest for the European viewer
were works by the northern nomads, a powerful political
force of that period: the famous gorytos from the Chertomlyk
Burial Mound and parts of a horse’s harness. Taken
together, these items acquainted visitors with the cultural,
political and artistic environment that shaped the personality
of the great king and military leader.
The following sections of the exhibition were devoted to
Alexander’s campaign to the East, which embodied the
idea of the expansion of Greek culture; the sections followed
Alexander’s route in sequence: works of art from
Asia Minor, ancient Egypt in the Ptolemaic period, and
monuments demonstrating the ancient traditions in the
Christian art of Coptic Egypt. Among the masterpieces on
display were: Alexander in the Guise of Zeus on a gem from
the 4th century B.C.; depictions of Alexander on coins
and a miniature portrait of him in marble; portraits of
the Hellenistic kings Mithridates VI Eupator and Ptolemy;
the celebrated Gonzaga cameo; a fresco from Nymphea
depicting the ship of Isis – possibly an ambassadorial ship
from Egypt to the Bosporus; items of Hellenistic jewellery.
A small section of the exhibition featured the art of Achaemenid
Iran in Alexander’s time. Syria in the Hellenistic
period was represented by a group of coins with rulers’
portraits. Many of the exhibits in the section The Hellenized
Installation of The Immortal Alexander the Great. The Myth. The Reality.
His Journey. His Legacy exhibition
temporary exhIbItIons
East were unique: they included monuments from Central
Asia, Parthia and the Greek-Bactrian Kingdom.
The Greek artistic style became universal in the Hellenistic
period – it was accepted by various peoples, irrespective of
their religion or state structure. Thus was conceived and
incarnated the idea of the cultural unity of the world –
the main consequence of the Macedonian king’s Eastern
campaign.
The last section of the display concentrated on Alexander’s
legacy. Reliefs from Palmyra dating from the 2nd and 3rd
centuries A.D. prove how firmly entrenched Greek influence
remained beyond its national frontiers. This is also
confirmed by Greek papyruses from Egypt, which provide
evidence of the use of Greek in post-Hellenistic territory
right up to the 9th century. On the other hand, ancient traditions
were continued in the culture of Byzantium – the
last Hellenistic state, which created the new Christian world
on ancient foundations. In the 15th and 16th centuries Alexander
played an important role in Persian literature as
Iskander. In the 18th and 19th centuries “The Alexander
Romance” became part of Russian culture – in education,
political thought, art and literature.
Alexander the Great remains topical even today. In a series
of photographs and videos specially made for the Hermitage
exhibition the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf created
an image of its main character by combining images of
the exhibits and images of a live model. Alexander is still
immortal, as evidenced by the exhibition in the Hermitage
• Amsterdam Centre.
By Anna Trofimova
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