Crowning Achievements

Four hundred years ago, on February 21, 1613,* the Romanov dynasty was inaugurated with the election of Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov to the Russian throne, bringing to an end the 15-year interregnum known to history as the Time of Troubles.

The Romanovs ruled Russia for 304 years and 12 days, ending with the abdication of Nicholas II on March 2, 1917. Over those three centuries, each Romanov coronation was an occasion for the public expression of state power and tsarist legitimacy. Starting in the eighteenth century, that expression included the creation of a coronation album.

Coronation albums are part of the book genre known to collectors as "festival books." Since the European Renaissance, such historic books were used to announce and document significant events – e.g. births, christenings, marriages, deaths – in royal lives. They were eyewitness accounts presenting a particular point of view that included event highlights and information, such as who followed whom in a procession, what people were wearing, as well as images of regalia. They ranged in style from modest leaflets to lavish manuscripts and were often published in numerous languages. While elegant and impressive in their documentation of the crowning of a sovereign, Russian coronation albums, as in Europe, were not typically meant for mass consumption. They were instead remarkable gifts given to select foreign dignitaries, aristocratic groups and high-ranking individuals.

A page from Nicholas II's 1896 Coronation Album.

Peter the Great (ruled 1682-1725) discovered coronation albums during his Great Embassy to Europe (1697-8), and he introduced them to Russia for his second wife's coronation (as Catherine I). No copy of the album is extant in the West, but a microfilm copy is available at Harvard's Widener Library. "It includes a description of the 1724 coronation inside the Kremlin's Cathedral of the Assumption, the moment of the crowning; there are also prints," said Kristen Regina, Head of Research Collections at Hillwood Museum.

The Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, located in Washington, D.C., is marking this spring's 400th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty with an exhibition of coronation albums titled Pageant of the Tsars: The Romanov Coronation Albums, running from February 14 through June 8, 2013.

Home to the largest representative collection of Russian fine and decorative art outside of Russia, Hillwood possesses five of seven imperial coronation albums published by seven of the 13 tsars between the time of Catherine I and Nicholas II. Which is part of why Hillwood Executive Director Kate Markert felt they were the ideal way to commemorate this major anniversary.

There will not be a copy of the Catherine I coronation album in Hillwood's Pageant exhibition, due to a hold on United States public institutions borrowing objects from Russia. "We'll have nineteenth century reprints of Catherine I being crowned, and we are borrowing Anna Ioannovna's album from the New York Public Library – the only known copy in a public collection outside of Russia," said Kristen Regina. "The albums were not widely printed, for instance the 1856 album of Alexander II had 400 altogether, 200 in Russian and 200 in French – they vary from reign to reign."

Indeed, each album represents a particular historical moment in time. Anna Ioannovna's and Elizabeth I's albums were printed in German and Russian. Nicholas I's was published only in French. "They clearly reflect the way an emperor or empress wanted to be presented and marketed to other kings, courts, diplomats, and those who attended the coronation," said Regina.

Russian tsars and tsarinas were "anointed of God" and thus a coronation was not merely a time for grand celebration, but also a solemn religious and historic matter governed by time-honored tradition. Celebrations typically included at least a week of festivities, feasts, military parades, balls and fireworks. Commemorating the event with something tangible, such as a luxurious album, was a choice many of the rulers made, though some, such as Catherine II (1762-96, "the Great"), did not. Hillwood will represent each of the Romanov rulers in their exhibition, whether or not they chose to create an album.

Nonetheless, the exhibition will focus on the six coronation albums, with their impressive bindings and images. They will be surrounded by decorative arts, paintings, books, menus and prints that help to tell each ruler's story. Most of the 60 "supporting objects" will come directly from Hillwood's own Russian collection; others are on loan from private collectors.

One particularly moving object on display is the Khodynka Field cup, an enamel cup commemorating the 1896 coronation of Nicholas II. Cartloads of these souvenir cups were meant to be distributed to the general public at the celebration on Moscow's Khodynka Field, the morning after Nicholas' coronation. Some 500,000 people arrived at Khodynka Field, waiting to see the new tsar and enjoy the open-air feast. The crowd had been up all night celebrating. The commemorative cups and free beer began to arrive, and then a rumor arose that there would not be enough for everyone. People began to run toward the carts carrying the cups and beer. Pandemonium ensued and men, women and children were trampled. Hundreds died and thousands were wounded.

What stands out from the coronation albums is how each emperor or empress chose to present themselves to posterity and to the world. Anna Ioannovna, who had refused to sign a document presented to her by the Supreme Privy Council, which would have restricted her power, used her album to assert her role as autocrat. Elizabeth I, the legitimate daughter of Peter the Great, arrived on the throne after overthrowing her infant cousin in a dangerous coup. She too used her album as a way of substantiating her rule – cleverly linking herself to her legendary father. The show-stopper, however, is Alexander II's mammoth 1856 coronation album in its original binding. Weighing in at 60 pounds, it measures six feet across when open.

A secondary focus of the Hillwood exhibition is printing. For the albums show off the best available printing technology at the time of their production, from engraving and etching in the eighteenth century to nineteenth century chromolithography (the first truly successful method of making colored prints by lithography).

There was no printing press in Russia when Mikhail Romanov was crowned in 1613, but there was a manuscript written by hand, which Alexander II had reprinted in 1857 via chromolithography printing, so that the document could be distributed more widely at court. The original had been entered into the state archives, to which only select scholars were granted access.

To keep up with our digital times, there will be eight iPads installed in the gallery. Six will contain highlights from each album, the seventh will display highlights from Mikhail Romanov's reprinted manuscript, and the last will hold a collection of nineteenth century reprints reflecting the coronation of Catherine the Great, one of which will be on view. Nineteen versions of the e-publications will be available in a digital format as free downloads from iTunes including a version which contains all images and another that consists of all text and image pages digitized by the New York Public Library. These digital versions may be used while in the exhibition space, allowing for an even richer experience.

It is interesting to consider what Hillwood's founder, Marjorie Merriweather Post, might have made of this exhibition. Post was heir to the Post Cereal Empire, which she transformed years later into the General Foods Corporation. Following her divorce from E.F. Hutton in 1935, Post married Joseph Davies, who was U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1936-38. Post and Davies went to Moscow in 1937 and spent the next eighteen months in Russia, at the height of Stalin's purges.**

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet state sold off countless imperial objects to raise needed hard currency. Vast quantities of imperial decorative and fine art had been sold by the Soviets prior to Post's arrival to Russia, yet she still found much of interest in 1937 and 1938.

"Marjorie Merriweather Post was already an avid collector of superb French and European decorative arts when her discovery of Russian treasures in the 1930s ignited another lifelong passion," said museum director Markert. "She found the imperial and ecclesiastical porcelain, silver, enamels, and glass were perfectly suited to her taste for beautiful and finely crafted objects. She formed the germ of her Russian collection with the discoveries she made in the Soviet commission shops and warehouses. When she returned to the US, her many friends and guests were captivated by her collection of icons, chalices, and silver objects from this land of great intrigue."

In the late 1950s, Post hired Marvin Ross to be her curator. He guided Post over the years and together they grew her Russian collection through acquisitions via art dealers and auctions. Highlights of Hillwood's Russian collection today include Karl Bryullov's Portrait of Countess Samoilova, Konstantin Markovsky's,
A Boyar Wedding Feast, porcelain services commissioned by Catherine the Great, two Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs, a Yusupov family music box (also by Fabergé) that plays "The White Lady," Empress Alexandra's Nuptial Crown, a chandelier from the Catherine Palace, significant Russian Orthodox religious items, including chalices, vestments and icons from the 1500s to the 1800s, and a grand, full-length portrait of Catherine the Great.

In 1968, three coronation albums were donated to Hillwood (which Post had already set up to become a museum upon her death) by Prince Serge Beloselsky-Belozersky – the monumental albums of Nicholas I, Alexander II, and Nicholas II. The other two albums were acquired subsequently, Elizabeth I's, through a Christies auction in 1990, and Alexander III's, obtained from the Fekula Collection in 1986.

Today Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens is open to the public Tuesdays through Saturdays, and on select Sundays. "Thanks to her (Marjorie Merriweather Post) prescience, today this rich collection of objects, paintings, and books exists all under one roof, allowing us to share it with the world, gain new perspectives, and explore its historical significance through an interesting array of research, lectures, and special exhibitions," Markert said.

In addition to such special exhibits, the museum puts on special seasonal events throughout the year, including a Russian-themed Winter Festival in December. RL

Notes

* March 3, New Style; Mikhail was crowned on March 24, 1613; the claim to succession was that his grandfather was brother-in-law to Ivan IV (the Terrible).

** History has not been kind to Davies and his tenure as ambassador. He was noted for being too "pro-Soviet," for glossing over show-trials and repressions, and for writing in one memorandum, "Communism holds no serious threat to the United States."

For additional information on the exhibit, visit hillwoodmuseum.org