Ural pink granite, carved at the Imperial Lapidary Manufactory in Yekaterinburg, Ural, Western Siberia.
Chased and gilt bronze: Saint Petersburg Imperial Bronze Foundry.
H. 56 cm. (22 in.).
PROVENANCE: collection of Count Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov (1733-1811), at the Stroganov Palace in Saint Petersbourg, then descendants; Sammlung Stroganoff, Leningrad, auction of the Stroganov collection, in Berlin, Rudolph Lepke’s Kunst-Auctions-Haus, 13th May 1931, lot n° 14; anonymous auction in Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Beaussant Lefèvre auction house, 25th April 2003, lot n° 133; Hubert Guerrand-Hermès collection; Galerie Steinitz collection in Paris.
LITERATURE on the Stroganov collection: Louis Réau, “L’art français du XVIIIe siècle dans la collection Stroganov”, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français, 1931, fasc. 1, p. 62-68; Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, Stroganoff, the palace and collections of a Russian noble family, New York, 2000; I. Sychev, Russian Bronze, Moscow, 2003.
EXHIBITION on the Stroganov collection: Les Stroganoff, une dynastie de mécènes, catalogue of the exhibition held at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, from 8th March to 2nd June 2002.
This imposing covered vase, adorned with two imposing figures of mermaids wearing Egyptian nemes headdresses and a shendyt (loincloth) around their waists, is emblematic of the collection of Count Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov (1733-1811), who took over the administrative management of the three Russian imperial lapidary manufactories – those at Peterhof, Yekaterinburg and Kolyvan – in 1800. Designed by a major figure of Russian Neoclassicism, Andrei Nikiforovich Voronikhin (1759-1814), the protégé architect of the Count who launched his career, and probably his biological son, the vase was carved circa 1805 at the Imperial Lapidary Manufactory in Yekaterinburg, and then mounted in gilded bronze in the Imperial Bronze Foundry of Saint Petersburg. It is reminiscent of several mounted vases, all designed by Voronikhin, now in the collections of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.
Our vase makes a masterly appearance in a posthumous and highly symbolic portrait of Count Stroganov (Ill. 1), painted in 1814 by Alexander Grigorievich Varnek (1782-1843), based on the 1804 painting executed by the French painter Jean-Laurent Mosnier (1743-1808), showing the Count now wearing the robes of President of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg.
