The Collection of Indian Art at the Hermitage
The main landmarks of its formation
Although India had been 'discovered' in Russia as early as 1466, there were only individual Russian-Indian contacts for some four centuries. Russian collectors were seldom interested in Indian art and culture. This is why the Hermitage Indian art collection only began to be formed in the 1950s. Since then it has been enriched by various official and private gifts.
By OLGA DESHPANDE
India, a land of miracles and fabulous wealth, long ago attracted medieval Russia. India was discovered here earlier than in Europe: in 1466 Afanasij Nikitin, a Tver' merchant had already reached India via the Volga River, the Caspian Sea, Persian, and Arabian Seas and spent six years there. His 'Notes about Roaming beyond Three Seas' (Nikitin 1948) are considered to be one of the best sources on medieval India. Notwithstanding the constant attempts to establish trade relations with India ('foreign guest markets' in Astrakhan and Moscow and the seventeenth-century Semion Little embassy to Shah Aurangzeb's court, 1695-1702), there were only incidental one-to-one Russian-Indian contacts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centruries. Although Russian indology began to unfold by the middle of the nineteenth century, Russian collectors (nobility and intellectuals) were traditionally far more interested in Ancient Egypt and Antiquity; or the Near or Far East, 'omitting' India. The few objects brought to Russia were concentrated mainly in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, the oldest Russian ethnographic museum.Having been collected according to the tastes and interests of the Russian tsars, the Hermitage collections had contained practically no examples of Indian art till the end of the nineteenth century (with the exception of a group of Mughal ornaments captured by Nadir-Shah in Delhi in 1736 and sent as his personal gift to the Empress Anna Ioanovna. Until the 1960s they were generally registered as 'Persian' in the Museum inventories.
The first large collection of Indian art objects - silk textiles and Cashmere shawls, metalwork and ceramics, miniatures on ivory - came to the Hermitage after the grand tour of the Orient in 1890-1891 by the heir to the throne, Nikolaj Aleksandrovitch. Later most of them were transferred to the aforesaid Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography at various times.
This situation persisted up to the Bolshevik revolution - those separate items of Indian art (miniatures and applied art) that arrived at the Hermitage were usually registered as 'Persian'. After the revolution, in the course of the confiscation of private collections and the re-organisation of museums, Indian items (bronze statuettes, miniatures, applied art) gradually began to trickle into the Hermitage.
The separation of the Indian art objects into an independent collection began after World War II and this marked the beginning of the proper Indian art collection. As before, it still consisted mainly of miniatures and applied art, with the exception of a small group of stucco statues from Hadda, the Afganian part of Gandhåra. These twenty items in total (mainly fragments of shattered figurines of the Buddha), were discovered by the Delégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan in the late 1920s. They were presented to the Hermitage by Musée Guimet in 1936 on the occasion of the International Iranian congress timed to coincide with the millennium of Firdowsi's birth.
Additions to the ancient and medieval parts of the Indian collection only came very slowly - such objects had been virtually absent from the private Russian collections, and the museum itself was unable to acquire things abroad because of the specific position in which of the Soviet museums found themselves. In 1957 the Oriental Department was enriched by a precious gift presented by the Afganian king, Muhammad Zadir-shah, after he had made the acquaintance of the Hermitage collections, especially that of the Oriental Department. He donated a schist head of a Bodhisattva from Bagram, AD 200, and a stucco Buddha head from Hadda, AD 500.
The most generous gifts to the Hermitage were then still to come. In May 1966 a group of ancient and medieval works of art - stone sculptures, from third to tenth centuries, South Indian bronze statuettes, twelfth to fifteenth century, miniatures - was presented to the Hermitage as a gift of the Indian government by the Indian ambassador, Mr. Triloki Nath Kaul. The permanent Indian exhibition was thereby considerably enriched by some valuable exhibits: a relief of the Mathura school, mottled red sandstone, third century AD, showing Durga Mahishåsuramandin^, a representation of lovers-mithuna, light sandstone, tenth century, dating from the time of the Pratihara dynasty; a frieze from the Hoisaleßvara temple in Halebide, near Mysore, representing Ganesa and eight goddesses, consorts of the main Indian gods; a gracious bronze sculptural composition Umå-Maheßvarimurti - a seated Shiva and his spouse, Uma; a sheet of a Jain manuscript with a miniature of the Western Indian school, fourteenth to fifteenth century; a Kangra school miniature showing 'Shiva and his family', fifteen items in total. A sculptural group 'Yaksha Gomukha and his beloved Chakreßvari', made of highly polished light sandstone, eighth century, has become a real adornment of the museum exhibition (fig. 1) - it is characterized by the strength, restraint, and a certain monumentality of the sculpted form. Its consummate modelling reveals perfectly prana, one of the main requirements, of Indian aesthetics, reproducing 'vital breath', filling one's body.
During the next few decades, only applied art objects of the Mughal period were added to the collection. Then in September 1999 a new, highly significant gift was made by a private person, Mme Krishna Riboud. Mine Krishna Riboud is widely known as an eminent public figure and a scholar, an esteemed author on Far Eastern textiles, a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, president of Association d'Etude et Documentation de Textiles d'Asie (AEDTA) founded by herself. Mme Riboud, who is Indian born herself, belongs to a family of remarkable Indian cultural and public figures of the late nineteenth - early twentieth centuries, being a close relative of the most prominent Indian enlightener of those days - Rabindranath Tagore. An old friend of the Hermitage, as early as 1966 Mine Riboud had given three rare miniatures (Bihar school, fifteenth - seventeenth century) representing scenes from the ancient 'Ramayana' epic as her personal gift to our Museum.
Her new gift consists of four beautiful items of ancient and medieval Indian art. A female head. (fifth - sixth century) of exquisite workmanship (fig.2) is a real gem among them. In Russia ancient and medieval Indian art is represented only at the Hermitage; even here classical Gupta art (fourth - sixth century) had been absent so far - thus one can imagine the significance of such a gift, not only for the Hermitage but for the nation as a whole.
Besides this masterpiece she has given two heads of Mathura school, Kushan period, a Buddha (?) head, first - second century AD, and a Bodhisattva head, second - third century AD, both of red mottled sandstone, together with a big red sandstone fragment presenting a Shivite teacher or saint from Madhya Pradesh, tenth - twelfth century.
Thus during the half a century since its formation, the Hermitage Indian collection has been enriched by several very interesting items each enabling museum visitors to comprehend Indian art and culture in more depth. *
- Nikitin, Afanasiy
Khotchenie za tri morya Afanasiya Nikitina 1466-1472
(Notes about Walking Beyond Three Seas by Afanasiy Nikitin 1466-1472)
Moskow-Leningrad, 1948, Grekov,
B.D. and V.P. Adrianiva-Peretz (eds)
Dr Olga P. Deshpande, PhD (Art history), Senior Curator, Indian, Siamese, and Indonesian collections, Head of the Far Eastern Section, Oriental Department, The State Hermitage;
art and culture of Southeast Asia