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Krasnodembskaya N., Soboleva E. On the Aspirations of Peter the Great for the Region of South Asia (in Connection with Sinhalese Rarities in the Imperial Collection)

Nina Krasnodembskaya
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0003-0193-3905
E-mail: nigekrasno@mail.ru 

Elena Soboleva
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0001-6137-0476
E-mail: soboleva@kunstkamera.ru

 

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ABSTRACT. Aspirations of Peter the Great for the South Asian region inspired the acquisition of a series of unique and highly artistic Indian and Ceylon products. Exhibits from the Cabinet of Peter the Great were inherited by the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg, the Hermitage and other Russian museums. In the 16th–17th centuries Asian craftsmen produced high-quality objects from ivory, precious woods, metals and stones, usually reproducing the forms of objects familiar to Europeans (caskets, portable cabinets, boxes, etc.) and decor plots (illustrations from the Bible and other books). The exhibits of the MAE RAS are the examples of the Sinhala-Portuguese art: the carved ivory plates on the contadors MAE No. 743-1 and MAE No. 3170-3 represent typical Sinhalese floral, etc. design. Two ivory apothecary mortars with pestles in the form of European goblets and completely covered with high relief images in the Cabinet of Peter the Great (see State Russian Museum drawings Р-38067, Р-38082), now MAE No. 1910-1 and MAE No. 1910-2, have no analogues, they can be dated back to the 16th–17th centuries. The images demonstrate a rich spectrum of Sinhalese folklore and mythological subjects: woman-vine Nāri-latā-vẹla, fearsome mask Kibihi-muna, celestial musician Kiňduri, compositions constructed of female bodies (Nari Art). Thus, the South Asian ivories in the MAE (Kunstkamera) RAS represent a series of objects that are rarely found in world collections.

 

KEYWORDS: Cabinet of Peter the Great, Ceylon, Kunstkamera, ivory, Luso-Asian art, ethnography, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, collections, technologies

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8619-2022-1(15)-131-149
УДК 069.51:39

 

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