Description: “Stroganoff: The Palace and Collections of a Russian Noble Family by Penelope Hunter-Stiebel. NOTE: We have 100,000 books in our library, over 10,000 different titles. Odds are we have other copies of this same title in varying conditions, some less expensive, some better condition. We might also have different editions as well (some paperback, some hardcover, oftentimes international editions). If you don’t see what you want, please contact us and ask. We’re happy to send you a summary of the differing conditions and prices we may have for the same title. DESCRIPTION: HUGE Pictorial Softcover. Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (2000). Pages: 256. Size: 12¼ x 9¼ x 1 inch; 3½ pounds. Summary: The Stroganoffs were among Imperial Russia's wealthiest and most influential families. Their collection of art, antiquities, and decorative objects, assembled over five centuries, was rivaled only by the holdings of the tsar. This book, the companion volume to a major traveling exhibition, reassembles masterworks of the Stroganoff collection for the first time since the 1917 Revolution. The more than 200 objects showcased here are extraordinarily varied: exquisite 16th-century icons; European old-master paintings by Botticelli, Poussin, van Dyck, and Watteau; rare antiquities from around the world; and stunning decorative objects, such as the great malachite coupe from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Complete with photographs of that fabled Baroque palace, which is now under restoration, this book will be a revelation to art lovers everywhere. 245 illustrations, 220 in full color, maps. CONDITION: NEW. HUGE new pictorial softcover with high-end double layer covers. Harry N. Abrams (2001) 256 pages. Unblemished except for VERY faint (almost imperceptible) edge and corner shelf wear to the covers. From the inside the book is pristine. The pages are clean, crisp, unmarked, unmutilated, tightly bound, unambiguously unread. From the outside the covers evidence only the faintest edge and corner shelfwear. And by faint, we mean precisely that, literally. It requires that you hold the book up to a light source, tilting it this way and that so as to catch the reflected light, and scrutinize it quite intently to discern very, very faint shelfwear. Condition is entirely consistent with new stock from a traditional brick-and-mortar, shelved bookstore environment (such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, or B. Dalton, for example) bookstore environment wherein new books might show faint signs of shelfwear, consequence of routine handling and simply the process of being shelved and re-shelved. Satisfaction unconditionally guaranteed. In stock, ready to ship. No disappointments, no excuses. PROMPT SHIPPING! HEAVILY PADDED, DAMAGE-FREE PACKAGING! Meticulous and accurate descriptions! Selling rare and out-of-print ancient history books on-line since 1997. We accept returns for any reason within 30 days! #9292.1b. PLEASE SEE DESCRIPTIONS AND IMAGES BELOW FOR DETAILED REVIEWS AND FOR PAGES OF PICTURES FROM INSIDE OF BOOK. PLEASE SEE PUBLISHER, PROFESSIONAL, AND READER REVIEWS BELOW. PUBLISHER REVIEWS: REVIEW: Lavishly illustrated with more than two hundred works, this book chronicles the history of the Stroganoff family and its collections. From icons, embroideries, and richly decorated Russian stonework to exquisite paintings and decorative objects produced in Western Europe, these works of art, most of them never before reproduced, represent the highest level of quality and reflect the discerning taste of the Stroganoffs as both collectors and patrons. Of special interest are the architectural designs of Andrei Voronikhin, a Stroganoff protégé whose influence can still be seen in St. Petersburg today. This book, published to accompany an exhibition opening at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, provides an opportunity to understand how one family helped to shape the culture of a nation. REVIEW: Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, formerly a curator of decorative arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is a principal of the Rosenberg and Stiebel Gallery in New York City. John Buchanan, Jr., is the executive director of the Portland Art Museum, Oregon. Helene De Ludinghuysen is the director of the Stroganoff Foundation and the last living Stroganoff descendant. REVIEW: Exhibition Schedule included the Portland Art Museum, Oregon (February 19 through May 31, 2000) and the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (July 2 through October 1, 2000). REVIEW: The Stroganoffs were among Imperial Russia's wealthiest and most influential families. This book, the companion to a major traveling exhibition, showcases items from their collection, from 16th-century icons and paintings by Botticelli, to rare antiques and decorative objects. TABLE OF CONTENTS: -Prelude by Hélène de Ludinghausen. -A family Chronicle by Sergei Kuznetsov. -The Art of Faith by Tatyana Vilinbakhova. -Stroganoff Embroidery by Liudmila Likhachova. -The Stroganoff Collectors by Militsa Korshunova. -Classical Antiquities by Anna Trofimova. -Late-Antique Silver by Boris Marshak. -Medieval Art by Marta Kryzhanovskaya. -Ancient American Art by Miriam Dandamayeva. -Chinese Art by Maria Menshikova. -An Album of Stroganoff Paintings by Penelope Hunter-Stiebel. -Patronage by Penelope Hunter-Stiebel. -Artist and Patron by Yekaterina Deriabina. -The Imperial Academy of Fine Arts by Veronica Irina Bogdan. -Decorative Stonework by Natalia Mavrodina. -Andrei Voronikhin by Alexei Guzanov. -The Palace on Nevsky Prospect by Sergei Liubimtsev. PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS: REVIEW: Siberia became part of Russia largely as a result of the Stroganoffs' expeditions eastward in pursuit of land and mineral wealth, activities that made them the richest family in Russia. In the 18th century, they focused their energies on amassing art objects; Catherine the Great herself was jealous of their artistic forays. They collected ancient Roman sculpture, French and Italian oil paintings, and fine furniture and textiles, and developed a school of icon painting. When exquisite Sassanian silverware was unearthed on their estates, they ensured that this too was brought to grace their stately palaces. “Stroganoff: The Palace and Collections of a Russian Noble Family” catalogs the objects that the Portland Art Museum tracked down for an unusually wide-ranging exhibition. A vast bowl of green malachite from the Urals mounted on a gold tripod, obtained ultimately only through blackmail by the museum's director, is the show's pièce de résistance. Paintings and plans of the Stroganoffs' opulent cathedrals, palaces, and dachas are included and form a backdrop for the objects. The family residence on Nevsky Prospect in St. Petersburg was designed by the influential architect Voronikhin, a freed serf who is believed to have been Alexander Stroganoff's natural son. After decades of neglect, this palace is now being refurbished and the Stroganoff possessions are being rehabilitated by the Hermitage and State Russian Museums, a recognition of the Stroganoffs' vital involvement in Russia's expansion over 500 years. A conscious attempt to reestablish a sense of the continuum of Russian art and history after the disruptions of the last century, Stroganoff is an imaginative and resounding success. [Amazon]. REVIEW: Edited by a former curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this companion to a traveling exhibition organized by the University of Portland reassembles works collected over several centuries by the Stroganoffs, one of the most distinguished families of Imperial Russia. No other book dedicated to this industrious and outstanding family provides a better or more profound re-creation of their environment and lifestyle. The 230 dazzling illustrations present a breathtaking display of artistic wealth and diversity, while historical essays clarify the life and times of the Stroganoffs. By detailing their legacy, this book also details Imperial Russia!s rich cultural heritage. [Library Journal]. REVIEW: Many of the world's most exciting archaeological discoveries are being made in the central steppes of Eurasia, the vast undulating grasslands that stretch from Hungary to the Pacific. For thousands of years, nomadic tribes sharing strong cultural affinities flourished here, producing artworks of great power and vitality of which the objects illustrated in this book are spectacular examples. REVIEW: This book was a real eye opener to me. As a Russian historian, I'm constantly coming across members of the Stroganov family in history. They were the ones who opened up Siberia to Russia and much later they were very important for encouraging Russian arts and architecture. This book puts it all together, though, and presents a tremendous amount of research into the heritage of the Stroganovs in Russia. It begins with a history of the family, then turns to a discussion of the Stroganov style of icons. I'd never seen this style in such good reproduction quality. The colors - pink, malachite green, gold - are worthy of a poem. Another interesting chapter on the early Stroganov artistic heritage deals with the embroidery Stroganov women did for the church, which is also beautiful and harmonious in color. Then it turns to a discussion of the collections of the Stroganovs in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it is very impressive. From classical statues and ceramics to Chinese art and Old Masters, the Stroganovs were there. My favorite section was on the Stroganovs as patrons. Here we get into the ways in which the family supported the arts, including their key role in creating Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg and the close (familial, really) relationship with Andrei Voronikhin. The photographs of the condition of the Stroganov Palace at the end of the Soviet period, when a military organization had vacated it in the most terrible condition are just heartbreaking, especially after seeing it in its era of triumph. However, due to the work of Helene de Ludinghausen, who is a descendent of the family and important for putting this book together, the palace was restored. This is a fascinating look at the arts of Russia from the early modern period to 1917 as seen through one amazing family. Highly recommended. REVIEW: Stroganoff is one of the most familiar names in Russian history, that of an extraordinary family whose impact over five centuries included aggressive entrepreneurship as well as social vision and patronage of the arts. An exhibition of over 230 treasures collected by the Stroganoff family was shown at only two venues in the United States. The exhibition included include icons and antiquities, palace furnishings, and paintings of the greatest European masters from Botticelli to Poussin. These were be arrayed as they were in the Stroganoff Palace, one of the grandest 18th century buildings on St. Petersburg's principal thoroughfare, the world-famous Nevsky Prospekt. The exhibition drew upon the collections of The State Hermitage and The State Russian Museums to assemble works of art acquired, sponsored, or commissioned by members of the Stroganoff family from the late 16th century to the early 20th century. Russian curators and museum directors have joined in the effort to bring together this spectacular visual saga, the story of how one family shaped the culture of a nation. A segment of the exhibition focused on exquisite icons from the famed Stroganoff school, with a selection never before seen outside Russia. At the exhibition's core was a re-creation of the famed Paintings Gallery of the Stroganoff Palace, reuniting for the first time Stroganoff masterworks by Botticelli, Poussin, Van Dyck, Giordano, Watteau, and others. Additional highlights included the great malachite basin on a gilded stand from the Stroganoff Palace, now on view in the Malachite Room of the Hermitage. While the world is aware through several exhibitions of the wealth, style, and impact of generations of the Russian Imperial Family, this exhibition and the related publication were the first to explore the mythic Stroganoffs, one of the great noble families of Russia. Moreover, it will illustrate a case history of the value of art patronage in the development of a nation. The exhibition was organized by the Portland Art Museum, in Portland, Oregon, where it made its international debut February 19 through May 31, 2000. The Portland Art Museum worked in cooperation with The State Hermitage Museum and The State Russian Museums, and the coordinating curator for the exhibition was Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, formerly of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After its showing at the Kimbell Art Museum in the summer of 2000 (in Dallas), the exhibition was seen in Paris and St. Petersburg. REVIEW: The truth of an old Russian saying, "Richer than the Stroganoffs you'll never be," can be appreciated in "Stroganoff: The Palace and Collections of a Russian Noble Family", an exhibition catalog of 230 works of art that exhibited in 2000 at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. One of the wealthiest families of pre-Revolutionary Russia, the Stroganoffs had roots going back to the 14th century. They were responsible for building cathedrals and palaces as well as sponsoring schools of icon painting, enameling, gilt-bronze works and lapidary arts. The name was taken to honor the first family member who converted to the Russian Orthodox faith, who was 'Isstrogali" ("tortured and cut to pieces") by the Crimean Tatars. A lavishly illuminated document in the show, signed in 1564 by the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, recounts how the family came to prominence. After the Stroganoffs mounted a series of successful military expeditions into Siberia to conquer the Tatars, Ivan gave the family a tract the size of Virginia on Russia's eastern border. Here they became rich by processing salt, mining iron ore, trading furs and cultivating fresh-water pearls. By 1731 they produced half of Russia's salt. "They were pioneers," said John E. Buchanan Jr., the director of the Portland Art Museum. "They had to conquer the land, but once they got their wealth, they turned it back. They built churches and adorned them with icons and gold and silver embroideries. They opened scriptoriums. They were not just great shoppers but great connoisseurs and commissioners of art. They were accustomed to opulence long before they moved to St. Petersburg in the 1750's." Count Alexander Stroganoff (1733-1811) was a particularly active student of the Enlightenment. After living in Paris, in 1777 the count sent his talented 18-year-old serf, Andrei Voronikhin, to Moscow to study architecture and painting. Voronikhin, who may have been the count's natural son (*outside of his marriage), was then brought back to St. Petersburg for lessons alongside the count's son Paul, with a French tutor recommended by Denis Diderot. In 1785 the tutor took both young men on a tour through Russia to the Crimea and Black Sea. On his recommendation, Voronikhin was freed in 1786, and the tutor took them to Paris for more study. Voronikhin became one of Russia's greatest architects, the designer of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg and restorer of the imperial palace Pavlosk outside the city. When he returned to Russia in 1790, he redesigned two rooms in the Stroganoff Palace in St. Petersburg: the Mineral Cabinet and the Picture Gallery, a hall with coffered ceilings and marble columns. In 1793, he did a detailed watercolor of the gallery. The Portland Museum has borrowed the watercolor and many paintings depicted in it. It has also borrowed a green malachite basin, 52 inches high and 41 inches in diameter, designed by Voronikhin. He used Russia's most highly prized stone, and the basin is as tall as a person. It sits on a gilt bronze stand, a tripod with three winged goddesses. "It is one of the earliest stone basins made in Russia," said Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, the curator of the show. "It's so heavy it takes six men to move. On the base, the three females brace themselves against one another to support the immense weight of the stone resting on their wings. The inspiration may be Pompeiian, but the combination of the art, engineering and ingenuity is pure Russian." It could be commissioned only because an enlightened count promoted his serf's talents and also served as director of the Imperial Lapidary Works and the state bronze foundry. Also uniquely Russian are the elaborate embroideries. Some examples in the show were made by Stroganoff wives and daughters for ecclesiastical purposes in the 16th and 17th centuries; others were sewn in workshops established by the family. In 1656 Anna Stroganoff designed, and then embroidered in gold and silver threads, the shroud of St. Dmitri the Czarevitch. On its border, amid the symbols of the Evangelists and the figures of the Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel, for some reason she added a medieval man with the head of a smiling dog. He is thought to represent the founder of a monastery. "He is shown as having a dog's head because official iconography had not yet been established," the catalog explains. No matter. This charming dog-man would appeal to anyone. The Stroganoffs had eclectic collecting tastes, which included Etruscan terra-cotta busts, Chinese cloisonne enameled vases and Pre-Columbian sculptures. Count Sergei Stroganoff was an amateur archaeologist who let his peasants know he was interested in anything they found on his property. It was he who received some of the Sasanian silver that had been hidden in the family's dense forests. The silver, made between AD 224-651 in what is now Iran, belonged to Russian hunters and trappers who traded furs to Middle Eastern merchants in exchange for silver. One silver plate depicts a mounted king on a tiger hunt. He is shown in royal attire, bow bent, arrow pulled back, as the tiger roars. On the base of the plate, we see the beast again, now dead. Now in the Hermitage collection, it is a remarkable piece of craftmanship and amazingly vital in character. Ms. Hunter-Stiebel, a former decorative arts specialist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is also the editor of the show's 256-page catalog, with 16 essays, published by Harry N. Abrams. After leaving the USA's Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the exhibition traveled to a site in Paris and then to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. READER REVIEWS: REVIEW: Absolutely magnificent art work and antiquities. A really high quality publication, with huge color plates. A feast for the senses. REVIEW: This is a great collection, It's a shame that a good portion of this collection was sold off by the Bolshevics but with a few 'borrowed' items on loan from The Hermitage it's almost all of what was collected from this Noble Family. REVIEW: REVIEW: Photos are great. Shows some of the rooms of the mansion in St. Petersburg. ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND: History of Russia: Prior to the current era (before 0 A.D.) the vast lands of South Russia were home to various Proto-Indo-European tribes such as the Scythians. Between the third and sixth centuries A.D., the steppes were overwhelmed by successive waves of nomadic invasions when swept through Europe, as was the case with Huns and Turkish Avars. A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled South Russia through the 8th century. They were important allies of the Byzantine Empire and waged a series of successful wars against the Arab Califates. The Early East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia from the 7th century onwards and slowly assimilated the native Finno-Ugric tribes, such as the Merya, the Muromians and the Meshchera. In the mid-9th century, a group of Scandinavians, the Varangians, assumed the role of a ruling elite at the Slavic capital of Novgorod. Although they were quickly assimilated by the predominantly Slavic population, the Varangian dynasty lasted several centuries, during which they affiliated with the Byzantine, or Orthodox church and moved the capital to Kiev in A.D. 882. In the 10th to 11th centuries this state of Kievan Rus became the largest in Europe and one of the most prosperous, due to diversified trade with both Europe and Asia. However the opening of new trade routes with the Orient at the time of the Crusades contributed to the decline and defragmentation of Kievan Rus by the end of the 12th century. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the constant incursions of nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchaks and the Pechenegs, led to the massive migration of Slavic populations from the fertile south to the heavily forested regions of the north. The medieval states of Novgorod Republic and Vladimir-Suzdal emerged as successors to Kievan Rus, while the middle course of the Volga River came to be dominated by the Muslim state of Volga Bulgaria. Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongol invaders known as the “Golden Horde”, which would pillage Russia for over three centuries. Later known as the Tatars, they ruled the southern and central expanses of present-day Russia, while the territories of present-day Ukraine and Belarus were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland, thus dividing the Russian people in the north from the Belarusians and Ukrainians in the west. Nomadic rule retarded the country's economic and social development. However, the Novgorod Republic together with Pskov retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the Mongol yoke and was largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Led by Alexander Nevsky, the Novgorodians repelled the Germanic crusaders who attempted to colonize the region. While still under the domain of the Mongols the duchy of Moscow began to assert its influence in Western Russia in the early 14th century. Assisted by the Russian Orthodox Church Muscovy inflicted a defeat on the Mongols in the Battle of Kulikovo (1389). Ivan the Great (ruled 1456-1505) eventually tossed off the control of the invaders, consolidated surrounding areas under Moscow's dominion and first took the title "grand duke of all the Russias". After the fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire in 1453 A.D., Muscovite Russia remained the only more or less functional Christian state on the Eastern European frontier, allowing it to claim succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. By the beginning of the 16th century the Russian state set the national goal to return all Russian territories lost as a result of the Mongolian invasion and to protect the southern borderland against attacks of Crimean Tatars and other Turkic peoples. In 1547, Ivan the Terrible was officially crowned the first Tsar of Russia. During his long reign, Ivan annexed the Muslim polities along the Volga River and transformed Russia into a multiethnic state. By the end of the century, Russian Cossacks established the first settlements in Western Siberia. In the middle of the 17th century there were Russian settlements in Eastern Siberia all the way to the Pacific coast, where the strait between North America and Asia was first sighted by a Russian explorer in 1648. Muscovite control of the nascent nation continued after the Polish intervention of 1605-1612 under the subsequent Romanov dynasty, beginning with Tsar Michael Romanov in 1613. Peter the Great (ruled in 1689-1725) defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, forcing it to cede even more territory to Russia, including Ingria in which Peter founded a new capital, Saint Petersburg. Peter succeeded in bringing ideas and culture from Western Europe to a severely underdeveloped Russia. After his reforms, Russia emerged as a major European power. Catherine the Great, ruling from 1762 to 1796, continued Peter’s efforts at establishing Russia as one of the great powers of Europe. Examples of its 18th-century European involvement include the War of Polish Succession and the Seven Years' War. In the wake of the Partitions of Poland, Russia had taken territories with the ethnic Belarusian and Ukrainian population, earlier parts of Kievan Rus. As a result of the victorious Russian-Turkish wars, Russia's borders expanded to the Black Sea and Russia set its goal on the protection of Balkan Christians against a Turkish yoke. In 1783 Russia and the Georgian Kingdom (which was almost totally devastated by Persian and Turkish invasions) signed the treaty of Georgievsk according to which Georgia received the protection of Russia. In 1812, having gathered nearly half a million soldiers from France, as well as from all of its conquered states in Europe, Napoleon invaded Russia but, after taking Moscow, was forced to retreat back to Europe. The Russian armies ended their pursuit of the enemy by taking his capital, Paris. As a result of the Napoleonic wars Bessarabia, Finland, and Poland were incorporated into the Russian Empire. However the continuation of Russian serfdom impeded the development of Imperial Russia in the mid-19th century. As a result, the country was defeated in the Crimean War, 1853–1856, by an alliance of major European powers, including Britain, France, Ottoman Empire, and Piedmont-Sardinia. Nicholas's successor Alexander II (1855–1881) was forced to undertake a series of comprehensive reforms and issued a decree abolishing serfdom in 1861. The Great Reforms of Alexander's reign spurred increasingly rapid capitalist development and attempts at industrialization. The Slavophile mood was on the rise, spearheaded by Russia's victory in the War of 1877-1878, which forced the Ottoman Empire to recognize the independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and autonomy of Bulgaria. However the failure of agrarian reforms and suppression of the growing liberal intelligentsia were continuing problems however. On the eve of World War I, the position of Tsar Nicholas II and his dynasty appeared precarious. Repeated devastating defeats of the Russian army in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I and the resultant deterioration of the economy led to widespread rioting in the major cities of the Russian Empire and to the overthrow in 1917 of the Romanovs. At the close of this Russian Revolution of 1917, a Marxist political faction called the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd and Moscow under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party. A bloody civil war ensued, pitting the Bolsheviks' Red Army against a loose confederation of anti-socialist monarchist and bourgeois forces known as the White Army. The Red Army triumphed, and the Soviet Union was formed in 1922. The Soviet Union was meant to be a transnational worker's state free from nationalism. The concept of Russia as a separate national entity was therefore not emphasized in the early Soviet Union. Although Russian institutions and cities certainly remained dominant, many non-Russians participated in the new government at all levels. One of these was a Georgian named Joseph Stalin. A brief power struggle ensued after Lenin's death in 1924. Stalin gradually eroded the various checks and balances which had been designed into the Soviet political system and assumed dictatorial power by the end of the decade. Leon Trotsky and almost all other Old Bolsheviks from the time of the Revolution were killed or exiled, and the ideals of communism died with them. As the 1930’s began, Stalin launched the Great Purges, a massive series of political repressions. Millions of people who Stalin and local authorities suspected of being a threat to their power were executed or exiled to Gulag labor camps in remote areas of Siberia. As bad as the Soviet was for Eastern Europe, it was equally bad for Russia. And though 27 million Russians perished in World War II, it would be difficult to determine in the end who killed more Russians, the Nazi’s or the Soviet Union itself under Stalin [AncientGifts]. Renaissance Russia: Renaissance trends from Italy and Central Europe influenced Russia in many ways. Their influence was rather limited due to several factors. The first was due to the large distances between Russia and the main European cultural centers. Second though no less significant was the strong adherence of Russians to their Orthodox traditions and Byzantine legacy. Prince Ivan III introduced Renaissance architecture to Russia by inviting a number of architects from Italy. These Italian architects who brought new construction techniques and some Renaissance style elements with them. However in general the architectural styles there produced followed the traditional designs of Russian architecture. In 1475 the Bolognese architect Aristotele Fioravanti came to rebuild the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin. The cathedral had been damaged in an earthquake. Fioravanti was given the 12th-century Vladimir Cathedral as a model. From it he produced a design combining traditional Russian style with a Renaissance sense of spaciousness, proportion and symmetry. In 1485 Ivan III commissioned the building of the royal residence, Terem Palace, within the Kremlin. Aloisio da Milano was the architect of the first three floors. He and other Italian architects also contributed to the construction of the Kremlin walls and towers. The small banquet hall of the Russian Tsars on the Cathedral Square of the Moscow Kremlin is the work of two Italians, Marco Ruffo and Pietro Solario. It is called the Palace of Facets because of its facetted upper story, and shows a more Italian style. In 1505 an Italian known in Russia as Aleviz Novyi or Aleviz Fryazin arrived in Moscow. He may have been the Venetian sculptor, Alevisio Lamberti da Montagne. He built twelve churches for Ivan III including the Cathedral of the Archangel. The Cathedral of the Archangel is a building remarkable for the successful blending of Russian tradition, Orthodox requirements and Renaissance style. Another work of Aleviz Novyi is the Cathedral of the Metropolitan Peter in Vysokopetrovsky Monastery. It is believed that the monastery later served as an inspiration for the so-called octagon-on-tetragon architectural form. This form was popular during the Moscow Baroque Period of the late 17th century. Between the early 16th and the late 17th centuries an original tradition of stone tented roof architecture developed in Russia. It was quite unique and different from the contemporary Renaissance architecture elsewhere in Europe. However some research describes the style as “Russian Gothic” and compares it with the European Gothic architecture of the earlier period. With their advanced technology the Italians may have influenced the invention of the stone tented roof. Of course wooden tents were known in Russia and Europe long before. According to one hypothesis an Italian architect called Petrok Maly may have authored the style of the Ascension Church in Kolomenskoye. This was one of Russia’s earliest and most prominent tented roof churches. By the 17th century the influence of Renaissance painting could be seen in Russian iconic religious art. This resulted in Russian icons becoming slightly more realistic while still following most of the old icon painting canons. This is evidenced in the works of Bogdan Saltanov, Simon Ushakov, Gury Nikitin, Karp Zolotaryov and other Russian artists of the era. Gradually the new type of secular portrait painting appeared called “parsúna”, from the Russian for "persona", or “person”. This was a transitional style between abstract iconographic and realistic paintings. An notable example might be “Theotokos and The Child”. This is a late-17th century Russian icon by Karp Zolotaryov. It features notably realistic depiction of faces and clothing. In the mid 16th century Russians adopted printing from Central Europe. Ivan Fyodorov was the first known Russian printer. In the 17th century printing became widespread. Woodcuts became especially popular. That led to the development of a special form of folk art known as “Lubok” printing. This style of folk art persisted in Russia well into the 19th century. A number of technologies from the European Renaissance period were adopted by Russia rather early. These technologies were subsequently perfected to become a part of a strong domestic tradition. Mostly these were in the nature of military technologies. One example might be cannon casting which was adopted no later than the 15th century. The Tsar Cannon was the world's largest bombard by caliber. It was a masterpiece of Russian cannon making. It was cast in 1586 by Andrey Chokhov. It is notable for its rich, decorative relief. Another technology resulted in the development of vodka, the national beverage of Russia. According to one hypothesis vodka distillery technology was originally brought from Europe by the Italians. As early as 1386 Genoese ambassadors brought the first aqua vitae ("water of life") to Moscow and presented it to Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy. The Genoese likely developed this beverage with the help of the alchemists of Provence. Those alchemists used an Arab-invented distillation apparatus to convert grape must into alcohol. A Moscovite monk called Isidore used this technology to produce the first original Russian vodka around 1430 AD. Scythian Nomads: The Scythians were a nomadic people who originated in the central Asian steppes sometime in the early first millennium, B.C. After migrating into what is present-day Ukraine, they prospered from the fifth to the third centuries, B.C, through trade with the Greek cities on the Black Sea coast. Scythian graves and burial mounds continue to yield an astonishing wealth of gold and silver objects, many of which are in the salled animal style associated with the central Asian steppes. Other objects reflect influence from ancient Near Eastern cultures, and still other pieces are either strongly in the Greek style or exhibit an intriguing blend of Greek and animal style elements. Many of the recently excavated objects presented here constitute a new chapter, even a new book, on the interrelationships of the ancient Aegean world, the ancient Near East, and the steppes that extend from north of the Black Sea as far as the Altai Republic near Mongolia. The Scythians: In the 1970s, Scythian art was the subject of one of the first of what are now commonly called "treasure house" shows at American art museums. An exhibition seen in New York and Los Angeles focused on the exquisitely fabricated decorative metalwork so highly prized by the ancient nomads of the region north of the Black Sea--metalwork in some cases made for them by Greek artisans working in Crimea more than 2,300 years ago. Scythian gold was hitherto largely unknown in the West, but the popular exhibition left a gilded icon in its wake: the glittering image of an elk-like deer, its legs tucked beneath its body in a recumbent pose, its antlers transformed into an elegant, rhythmic interlace of serpentine lines. As nomads, the Scythians were relatively limited in their artistic traditions and capacities. They had migrated from Central Asia around 600 BC. Hunting and gathering (and no doubt plundering) still went on, but in relatively short order they discovered something new. They discovered trade, and especially the meaning of the potentially lucrative term "middleman." The wandering Scythians found they could take grain grown by indigenous farmers in the north and sell it, at a big profit, to the Greek cities springing up in the south along the Black Sea coast. Eventually their peripatetic nomadism gave way to regular seasonal encampments. Slowly but surely the Scythians were getting rich, and so they did what the newly rich do: They went shopping. What they bought were luxuries. The Greeks who were building small cities around the Black Sea bought Scythian grain, but they had artistic talent to sell back to their increasingly prosperous traders. Consequently Scythian style and Greek often mingle, merge and mix with one another. One extraordinary example is an elaborately decorated sword and scabbard plated in gold. The refined and cleverly composed reliefs show scenes of fierce animal combat. The pommel of the sword carries a single crouching stag, typically Scythian, while the blade cover is arrayed with fantastic griffins--half eagle, half lion--of Near Eastern heritage. Elsewhere a half-goat figure of Pan, Greek god of the forests, turns up. And asymmetrical dynamism, which speaks of a worldview based on continuous movement and dramatic flux, begins to be transformed into a more relaxed balance and equilibrium, an expression of eternal harmony. In more general terms, Scythian decorative motifs tended to be animal and vegetable in origin, as might be expected from warriors who hunted. From Greece came representations of human beings, such as those that turned up at war on the ritual gold helmet, or the elegant seated women who appear on a pair of elaborate earrings, or the portrait-like men's faces that adorn bridle attachments. And the powerful Scythian figure of a ruling goddess, shown in the center of a magnificent diadem, is eventually joined by a bridle ornament showing the Greek figure of a bearded hero with a lion's pelt and an enormous club--who else but Hercules. It is said that the Scythians, whose brutal ways included human sacrifice in the ritual slaughter of attendants (and horses) at elaborate burial feasts, might have grown weak and slothful with all their worldly success as tradesmen. No one really knows for sure the details of why or how the Sarmatians quashed the Scythians. You get the feeling, though, that this otherwise engaging post-Cold War look at Scythian gold has been given a small but distinctly cautionary coda: Beware getting fat and sassy in a globalizing economy. More Scythians: Originally nomads, the Scythians migrated from central Asia through the Near East, finally settling on the shores of the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine. The wealth they earned by selling grain to Greek cities provided the means to purchase fabulous gold ornaments that fused the styles of Greece, the Near East, and Central Asia. It would be fair to say that the Scythians had a weakness for gold. Where did they get all that gold? It is accepted that the Scythians were fierce warriors. But historical myths suggest that the was as a result of commercial exchanges; grain for gold. Scythian art is characterized by its so-called animal style. This catalog displays some of the finest gold treasures of this ancient nomadic people--swords, a helmet, exquisite jewelry, and other objects dating from the fifth to the third centuries. Scythia and the Scythians: Scythia was a region of Central Eurasia in classical antiquity, occupied by the Eastern Iranian Scythians, encompassing parts of Eastern Europe east of the Vistula River and Central Asia, with the eastern edges of the region vaguely defined by the Greeks. The Ancient Greeks gave the name Scythia (or Great Scythia) to all the lands north-east of Europe and the northern coast of the Black Sea. The Scythians – the Greeks' name for this initially nomadic people – inhabited Scythia from at least the 11th century BC to the 2nd century AD. Its location and extent varied over time but usually extended farther to the west than is indicated on the map opposite. Scythia was a loose state that originated as early as 8th century BC. Little is known of them and their rulers. The most detailed western description is by Herodotus, though it is uncertain he ever went to Scythia. He says the Scythians' own name for themselves was "Scoloti". The Scythians became increasingly settled and wealthy on their western frontier with Greco-Roman civilization.The region known to classical authors as Scythia included the Pontic-Caspian steppe: Ukraine, southern Russia, and western Kazakhstan (inhabited by Scythians from at least the 8th century BC). Genetic evidence for ranging clear across the plains (steppes) from Black Sea to Lake Baikal. The Kazakh steppe: northern Kazakhstan and the adjacent portions of Russia Sarmatia, corresponding to eastern Poland, Ukraine, southwestern Russia, and the northeastern Balkans, ranging from the Vistula River in the west to the mouth of the Danube, and eastward to the Volga Saka tigrakhauda, corresponding to parts of Central Asia, including Kyrgyzstan, southeastern Kazakhstan, and the Tarim Basin Sistan or Sakastan, corresponding to southern Afghanistan, eastern Iran, and southwestern Pakistan, extending from the Sistan Basin to the Indus River. Following successive invasions of the Indo-Greek kingdoms, the Indo-Scythians also expanded east, capturing territory in what is today the Punjab region. Parama Kamboja, corresponding to northern Afghanistan and parts of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan Alania, corresponding to the northern Caucasus region Scythia Minor, corresponding to the lower Danube river area west of the Black Sea, with a part in Romania and a part in Bulgaria. In the 7th century BC Scythians penetrated from the territories north of the Black Sea across the Caucasus. The early Scythian kingdoms were dominated by inter-ethnic forms of dependency based on subjugation of agricultural populations in eastern South Caucasia, plunder and taxes (occasionally, as far as Syria), regular tribute (Media), tribute disguised as gifts (Egypt), and possibly also payments for military support (Assyria). It is possible that the same dynasty ruled in Scythia during most of its history. The name of Koloksai, a legendary founder of a royal dynasty, is mentioned by Alcman in the 7th century BC. Prototi and Madius, Scythian kings in the Near Eastern period of their history, and their successors in the north Pontic steppes belonged to the same dynasty. Herodotus lists five generations of a royal clan that probably reigned at the end of the 7th to 6th centuries BC: prince Anacharsis, Saulius, Idanthyrsus, Gnurus (Гнур (ru)), Lycus and Spargapithes. After being defeated and driven from the Near East, in the first half of the 6th century BCE, Scythians had to re-conquer lands north of the Black Sea. In the second half of that century, Scythians succeeded in dominating the agricultural tribes of the forest-steppe and placed them under tribute. As a result, their state was reconstructed with the appearance of the Second Scythian Kingdom which reached its zenith in the 4th century BC. Scythia's social development at the end of the 5th century BC and in the 4th century BC was linked to its privileged status of trade with Greeks, its efforts to control this trade, and the consequences partly stemming from these two. Aggressive external policy intensified exploitation of dependent populations and progressed the stratification among the nomadic rulers. Trading with Greeks also stimulated sedentarization processes. The proximity of the Greek city-states on the Black Sea coast (Pontic Olbia, Cimmerian Bosporus, Chersonesos, Sindica, Tanais) was a powerful incentive for slavery in the Scythian society, but only in one direction: the sale of slaves to Greeks, instead of use in their economy. Accordingly, the trade became a stimulus for capture of slaves as war spoils in numerous wars. The Scythian state reached its greatest extent in the 4th century BC during the reign of Ateas. Isocrates believed that Scythians, and also Thracians and Persians, are "the most able to power, and are the peoples with the greatest might." In the 4th century BC, under king Ateas, the tribune structure of the state was eliminated, and the ruling power became more centralized. The later sources do not mention three basileuses any more. Strabo tells that Ateas ruled over the majority of the North Pontic barbarians. Written sources tell that expansion of the Scythian state before the 4th century BC was mainly to the west. In this respect Ateas continued the policy of his predecessors in the 5th century BC. During western expansion, Ateas fought the Triballi. An area of Thrace was subjugated and levied with severe duties. During the 90 year life of Ateas, the Scythians settled firmly in Thrace and became an important factor in political games in the Balkans. At the same time, both the nomadic and agricultural Scythian populations increased along the Dniester river. A war with the Bosporian Kingdom increased Scythian pressure on the Greek cities along the North Pontic littoral. Materials from the site near Kamianka-Dniprovska, purportedly the capital of the Ateas’ state, show that metallurgists were free members of the society, even if burdened with imposed obligations. Metallurgy was the most advanced and the only distinct craft speciality among the Scythians. From the story of Polyaenus and Frontin, it follows that in the 4th century BC Scythia had a layer of dependent population, which consisted of impoverished Scythian nomads and local indigenous agricultural tribes, socially deprived, dependent and exploited, who did not participate in the wars, but were engaged in servile agriculture and cattle husbandry. The year 339 BC was a culminating year for the Second Scythian Kingdom, and the beginning of its decline. The war with Philip II of Macedon ended in a victory by the father of Alexander the Great. The Scythian king Ateas fell in battle well into his nineties. Many royal kurgans (Chertomlyk, Kul-Oba, Aleksandropol, Krasnokut) are dated from after Ateas’s time and previous traditions were continued, and life in the settlements of Western Scythia show that the state survived until the 250s BC. When in 331 BC Zopyrion, Alexander's viceroy in Thrace, "not wishing to sit idle", invaded Scythia and besieged Pontic Olbia, he suffered a crushing defeat from the Scythians and lost his life. The fall of the Second Scythian Kingdom came about in the second half of the 3rd century BC under the onslaught of Celts and Thracians from the west and Sarmatians from the east. With their increased forces, the Sarmatians devastated significant parts of Scythia and, "annihilating the defeated, transformed a larger part of the country into a desert". The dependent forest-steppe tribes, subjected to exaction burdens, freed themselves at the first opportunity. The Dnieper and Southern Bug populace ruled by the Scythians did not become Scythians. They continued to live their original life, which was alien to Scythian ways. From the 3rd century BC for many centuries the histories of the steppe and forest-steppe zones of North Pontic diverged. The material culture of the populations quickly lost their common features. And in the steppe, reflecting the end of nomad hegemony in Scythian society, the royal kurgans were no longer built. Archeologically, late Scythia appears first of all as a conglomerate of fortified and non-fortified settlements with abutting agricultural zones. The development of the Scythian society was marked by the following trends: An intensified settlement process, evidenced by the appearance of numerous kurgan burials in the steppe zone of North Pontic, some of them dated to the end of the 5th century BC, but the majority belonging to the 4th or 3rd centuries BC, reflecting the establishment of permanent pastoral coaching routes and a tendency to semi-nomadic pasturing. The Lower Dnieper area contained mostly unfortified settlements, while in Crimea and Western Scythia the agricultural population grew. The Dnieper settlements developed in what were previously nomadic winter villages, and in uninhabited lands. In the 4th century BC in the Dnieper forest-steppe zone, steppe-type burials appear. In addition to the nomadic advance in the north in search of the new pastures, they show an increase of pressure on the farmers of the forest-steppe belt. The Boryspil kurgans belong almost entirely to soldiers and sometimes even women warriors. The bloom of steppe Scythia coincides with decline of forest-steppe. From the second half of the 5th century BC, importing of antique goods to the Middle Dnieper decreased because of the pauperization of the dependent farmers. In the forest-steppe, kurgans of the 4th century BC are poorer than during previous times. At the same time, the cultural influence of the steppe nomads grew. The Senkov kurgans in the Kiev area, left by the local agricultural population, are low and contain poor female and empty male burials, in a striking contrast with the nearby Boryspil kurgans of the same era left by the Scythian conquerors. Growth of trade with Northern Black Sea Greek cities, and increase in Hellenization of the Scythian aristocracy. After the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian war, Attican agriculture was ruined. Demosthenes wrote that about 400,000 medimns (63,000 tons) of grain was exported annually from the Bosporus to Athens. The Scythian nomadic aristocracy not only served a middleman role, but also actively participated in the trade of grain (produced by dependent farmers as well as slaves), skins and other goods. Scythia's later history is mainly dominated by sedentary agrarian and city elements. As a result of the defeats suffered by Scythians, two separate states were formed, the 'Lesser Scythias': one in Thrace (Dobrudja), and the other in the Crimea and the Lower Dnieper area. Having settled this Scythia Minor in Thrace, the former Scythian nomads (or rather their nobility) abandoned their nomadic way of life, retaining their power over the agrarian population. This little polity should be distinguished from the Third Scythian Kingdom in Crimea and Lower Dnieper area, whose inhabitants likewise underwent a massive sedentarization. The interethnic dependence was replaced by developing forms of dependence within the society. The enmity of the Third Scythian Kingdom, centred on Scythian Neapolis, towards the Greek settlements of the northern Black Sea steadily increased. The Scythian king apparently regarded the Greek colonies as unnecessary intermediaries in the wheat trade with mainland Greece. Besides, the settling cattlemen were attracted by the Greek agricultural belt in Southern Crimea. The later Scythia was both culturally and socio-economically far less advanced than its Greek neighbors such as Olvia or Chersonesos. The continuity of the royal line is less clear in the Lesser Scythias of Crimea and Thrace than it had been previously. In the 2nd century BC, Olvia became a Scythian dependency. That event was marked in the city by minting of coins bearing the name of the Scythian king Skilurus. He was a son of a king and a father of a king, but the relation of his dynasty with the former dynasty is not known. Either Skilurus or his son and successor Palakus were buried in the mausoleum of Scythian Neapol that was used from c. 100 BC to c. 100 AD. However, the last burials are so poor that they do not seem to be royal, indicating a change in the dynasty or royal burials in another place. Later, at the end of the 2nd century BC, Olvia was freed from Scythian domination, but became a subject to Mithridates I of Parthia. By the end of the 1st century BC, Olbia, rebuilt after its sack by the Getae, became a dependency of the Dacian barbarian kings, who minted their own coins in the city. Later from the 2nd century AD Olbia belonged to the Roman Empire. Scythia was the first state north of the Black Sea to collapse with the invasion of the Goths in the 2nd century AD (see Oium). At the end of the 2nd century AD, King Sauromates II critically defeated the Scythians and included the Crimea into his Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus, a Roman client state. Scythian art is art, primarily decorative objects, such as jewellery, produced by the nomadic tribes in the area known to the ancient Greeks as Scythia, which was centred on the Pontic-Caspian steppe and ranged from modern Kazakhstan to the Baltic coast of modern Poland and to Georgia. The identities of the nomadic peoples of the steppes is often uncertain, and the term "Scythian" should often be taken loosely; the art of nomads much further east than the core Scythian territory exhibits close similarities as well as differences, and terms such as the "Scytho-Siberian world" are often used. Other Eurasian nomad peoples recognized by ancient writers, notably Herodotus, include the Massagetae, Sarmatians, and Saka, the last a name from Persian sources, while ancient Chinese sources speak of the Xiongnu or Hsiung-nu. Modern archaeologists recognize, among others, the Pazyryk, Tagar, and Aldy-Bel cultures, with the furthest east of all, the later Ordos culture a little west of Beijing. The art of these peoples is collectively known as steppes art. In the case of the Scythians the characteristic art was produced in a period from the 7th to 3rd centuries BC, after which the Scythians were gradually displaced from most of their territory by the Sarmatians, and rich grave deposits cease among the remaining Scythian populations on the Black Sea coast. Over this period many Scythians became sedentary, and involved in trade with neighboring peoples such as the Greeks. In the earlier period Scythian art included very vigorously modeled stylized animal figures, shown singly or in combat, that had a long-lasting and very wide influence on other Eurasian cultures as far apart as China and the European Celts. As the Scythians came in contact with the Greeks at the Western end of their area, their artwork influenced Greek art, and was influenced by it; also many pieces were made by Greek craftsmen for Scythian customers. Although we know that goldsmith work was an important area of Ancient Greek art, very little has survived from the core of the Greek world, and finds from Scythian burials represent the largest group of pieces we now have. The mixture of the two cultures in terms of the background of the artists, the origin of the forms and styles, and the possible history of the objects, gives rise to complex questions. Many art historians feel that the Greek and Scythian styles were too far apart for works in a hybrid style to be as successful as those firmly in one style or the other. Other influences from urbanized civilizations such as those of Persia and China, and the mountain cultures of the Caucasus, also affected the art of their nomadic neighbours. Scythian art especially Scythian gold jewellery is highly valued by museums and many of the most valuable artefacts are in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Their Eastern neighbours, the Pazyryk culture in Siberia produced similar art, although they related to the Chinese in a way comparable to that of the Scythians with the Greek and Iranian cultures. In recent years, archeologists have made valuable finds in various places within the area. The Scythians worked in a wide variety of materials such as gold, wood, leather, bone, bronze, iron, silver and electrum. Clothes and horse-trappings were sewn with small plaques in metal and other materials, and larger ones, including some of the most famous, probably decorated shields or wagons. Wool felt was used for highly decorated clothes, tents and horse-trappings, and an important nomad mounted on his horse in his best outfit must have presented a very colourful and exotic sight. As nomads, the Scythians produced entirely portable objects, to decorate their horses, clothes, tents and wagons, with the exception in some areas of kurgan stelae, stone stelae carved somewhat crudely to depict a human figure, which were probably intended as memorials. Bronze-casting of very high quality is the main metal technique used across the Eurasian steppe, but the Scythians are distinguished by their frequent use of gold at many sites, though large hoards of gold objects have also been found further east, as in the hoard of over 20,000 pieces of "Bactrian Gold" in partly nomadic styles from Tillya Tepe in Afghanistan. Earlier pieces reflected animal style traditions; in the later period many pieces, especially in metal, were produced by Greek craftsmen who had adapted Greek styles to the tastes and subject-matter of the wealthy Scythian market, and probably often worked in Scythian territory. Other pieces are thought to be imports from Greece. As the Scythians prospered through trade with the Greeks, they settled down and started farming. They also established permanent settlements such as a site in Belsk, Ukraine believed to the Scythian capital Gelonus with craft workshops and Greek pottery prominent in the ruins. The Pazyryk burials (east of Scythia proper) are especially important because the frozen conditions have preserved a wide variety of objects in perishable materials that have not survived in most ancient burials, on the steppes or elsewhere. These include wood carvings, textiles including clothes and felt appliqué wall hangings, and even elaborate tattoos on the body of the so-called Siberian Ice Maiden. These make it clear that important ancient nomads and their horses, tents, and wagons were very elaborately fitted out in a variety of materials, many brightly coloured. Their iconography includes animals, monsters and anthropomorphic beasts, and probably some deities including a "Great Goddess", as well as energetic geometric motifs. Archaeologists have uncovered felt rugs as well as well-crafted tools and domestic utensils. Clothing uncovered by archaeologists has also been well made many trimmed by embroidery and appliqué designs. Wealthy people wore clothes covered by gold embossed plaques, but small gold pieces are often found in what seem to be relatively ordinary burials. Imported goods include a famous carpet, the oldest to survive, that was probably made in or around Persia. Steppes jewelry features various animals including stags, cats, birds, horses, bears, wolves and mythical beasts. The gold figures of stags in a crouching position with legs tucked beneath its body, head upright and muscles tight to give the impression of speed, are particularly impressive. The "looped" antlers of most figures are a distinctive feature, not found in Chinese images of deer. The species represented has seemed to many scholars to be the reindeer, which was not found in the regions inhabited by the steppes peoples at this period. The largest of these were the central ornaments for shields, while others were smaller plaques probably attached to clothing. The stag appears to have had a special significance for the steppes peoples, perhaps as a clan totem. The most notable of these figures include the examples from: the burial site of Kostromskaya in the Kuban dating from the 6th century BC (Hermitage); Tápiószentmárton in Hungary dating from the 5th century BC, now National Museum of Hungary, Budapest; Kul Oba in the Crimea dating from the 4th century BC (Hermitage). Another characteristic form is the openwork plaque including a stylized tree over the scene at one side, of which two examples are illustrated here. Later large Greek-made pieces often include a zone showing Scythian men apparently going about their daily business, in scenes more typical of Greek art than nomad-made pieces. Some scholars have attempted to attach narrative meanings to such scenes, but this remains speculative. Although gold was widely used by the ruling elite of the various Scythian tribes, the predominant material for the various animal forms was bronze. The bulk of these items were used to decorate horse harness, leather belts & personal clothing. In some cases these bronze animal figures when sewn onto stiff leather jerkins & belts, helped to act as armor. The use of the animal form went further than just ornament, these seemingly imbuing the owner of the item with similar prowess & powers of the animal which was depicted. Thus the use of these forms extended onto the accoutrements of warfare, be they swords, daggers, scabbards, or axes. The primary weapon of this horse riding culture was the bow, & a special case had been developed to carry the delicate but very powerful composite bow. This case, "the gorytus", had a separate container on the outside which acted as a quiver, & the whole was often decorated with animal scenes or scenes depicting daily life on the steppes. There was a marked following of Grecian elements after the 4th century BC, when Greek craftsmen were commissioned to decorate many of the daily use articles. Scythian art has become well known in the West thanks to a series of touring loan exhibitions from Ukrainian and Russian museums, especially in the 1990s and 2000s. Kurgans are large mounds that are obvious in the landscape and a high proportion have been plundered at various times; many may never have had a permanent population nearby to guard them. To counter this, treasures were sometimes deposited in secret chambers below the floor and elsewhere, which have sometimes avoided detection until the arrival of modern archaeologists, and many of the most outstanding finds come from such chambers in kurgans that had already been partly robbed. Elsewhere the desertification of the steppe has brought once-buried small objects to lie on the surface of the eroded land, and many Ordos bronzes seem to have been found in this way. Russian explorers first brought Scythian artworks recovered from Scythian burial mounds to Peter the Great in the early 18th century. These works formed the basis of the collection held by the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Catherine the Great was so impressed from the material recovered from the kurgans or burial mounds that she ordered a systematic study be made of the works. However, this was well before the development of modern archaeological techniques. Nikolai Veselovsky (1848-1918) was a Russian archaeologist specializing in Central Asia who led many of the most important excavations of kurgans in his day.[11] One of the first sites discovered by modern archaeologists were the kurgans Pazyryk, Ulagan district of the Altay Republic, south of Novosibirsk. The name Pazyryk culture was attached to the finds, five large burial mounds and several smaller ones between 1925 and 1949 opened in 1947 by a Russian archeologist, Sergei Rudenko; Pazyryk is in the Altay Mountains of southern Siberia. The kurgans contained items for use in the afterlife. The famous Pazyryk carpet discovered is the oldest surviving wool pile oriental rug. The enormous hoard of "Bactrian gold" discovered at Tillya Tepe in northern Afghanistan in 1978 comes from the fringes of the nomadic world, and the objects reflect the influence of many cultures to the south of the steppes as well as steppes art. The six burials come from the early 1st century AD (a coin of Tiberius is among the finds) and though their cultural context is unfamiliar, it may relate to the Indo-Scythians who had created an empire in north India. Recent digs in Belsk, Ukraine uncovered a vast city believed to be the Scythian capital Gelonus described by Herodotus. Numerous craft workshops and works of pottery have been found. A kurgan or burial mound near the village of Ryzhanovka in Ukraine, 75 mi (121 km) south of Kiev, found in the 1990s has revealed one of the few unlooted tombs of a Scythian chieftain, who was ruling in the forest-steppe area of the western fringe of Scythian lands. There at a late date in Scythian culture (c. 250 - 225 BC), a recently nomadic aristocratic class was gradually adopting the agricultural life-style of their subjects. Many items of jewelry were also found in the kurgan. A discovery made by Russian and German archaeologists in 2001 near Kyzyl, the capital of the Russian republic of Tuva in Siberia is the earliest of its kind and predates the influence of Greek civilisation. Archaeologists discovered almost 5,000 decorative gold pieces including earrings, pendants and beads. The pieces contain representations of many local animals from the period including panthers, lions, bears and deer. Earlier rich kurgan burials always include a male, with or without a female consort, but from the 4th and 3rd centuries there are number of important burials with only a female. The finds from the most important nomad burials remain in the countries where they were found, or at least the capitals of the states in which they were located when found, so that many finds from Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union are in Russia. Western European and American museums have relatively small collections, though there have been exhibitions touring internationally. The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has the longest standing and the best collection of Scythian art. Other museums including several local ones in Russia, in Budapest and Miskolc in Hungary, Kiev in Ukraine, the National Museum of Afghanistan and elsewhere have important holdings. The Scythian Gold exhibition came from a number of Ukrainian exhibitions including the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, the Institute of Archaeology in Kiev and the State Historical Archaeological Preserve at Pereiaslav-Khmel'nyts'kyi. Scythian Art: Scythian Art showcases ancient treasures of the Scythians, the fierce, nomadic horsemen who roamed the European steppe from the seventh to the third centuries BC. These proud warriors, who grew rich on trade with the Greeks, commissioned lavish gold objects for adornment, ceremony and battle, drawing on their own ancient artistic traditions and employing the finest Greek goldsmiths of the age. The Scythians flourished more than 2,500 years ago in what is present-day Ukraine and are among the most fascinating of the great warrior cultures that dominated the steppes for centuries. They originated in the central Asian steppes sometime in the early first millennium, BC. After migrating into what is present-day Ukraine, they flourished, from the seventh to the third centuries, BC, over a vast expanse of the steppe that stretched from the Danube, east across what is modern Ukraine and east of the Black Sea into Russia. Invincible for nearly four centuries, the Scythians were a people of great military skill and unrelenting ferocity. They were also extremely influential patrons of the arts, and left behind an extraordinary legacy of both ruthless conquest and lavish artifacts. Gold of the Nomads offers visitors a rare glimpse into the lives of these great warriors, whose brutality was matched only by their passion for exquisite ornament. Much of what is known about the Scythians has been uncovered through archaeological excavations of their burial mounds, known as kurhany. Ongoing explorations of kurhany continue to recover an astonishing wealth of gold and silver objects, ranging from horse trappings to armor, weaponry, jewelry and ceremonial adornment. Early finds of Scythian gold artifacts in the 1700s were so stunning that Catherine the Great ordered their systematic study, launching what became the field of Scythian archaeology. Some of the most extraordinary finds were uncovered only in the last two decades, and excavations continue on an ongoing basis to explore some of the more than 40,000 kurhany still unexcavated in Ukraine. Many of the works of art are in the animal style associated with the central Asian steppes, while others reflect influence from ancient Near Eastern cultures. Still other objects reveal a fusion of the animal style with Near Eastern motifs and Greek iconography and style. Rich evidence of this sophisticated, artistic dialogue constitutes an intriguing new frontier in archaeological research. The story of the Scythians and Scythian art is also a story of interaction with the Greek world, which eagerly purchased grain, furs and amber from the Scythians. Profits from this trade brought Scythians the wealth to indulge their taste for elaborate objects ranging from torques to horse decorations. Magnificent gilded bronze Greek vessels discovered in a bog 300 miles up the Dnipro River testify to the extensive commercial and cultural ties between the peoples. When the Scythians at last abandoned their nomadic lifestyle for the prosperous, settled life which trade had brought them, the door was opened for the invasion of a hardier nomadic tribe, the Sarmatians. The exhibition will close with several superb Sarmatian gold objects, including a torque, a dolphin brooch and a pendant, as a reminder of how intriguing and how still little known are the cultures, objects, and artistic styles of this part of the world. Russian-Scythian Grave Excavation: Russian scholars from the State Hermitage Museum have concluded that a discovery of Scythian gold in a Siberian grave last summer is the earliest of its kind ever found and that it predates Greek influence. The find is leading to a change in how scholars view the supposed barbaric, nomadic tribes that once roamed the Eurasian steppes. The dig near Kyzyl, the capital of the Siberian republic of Tuva, revealed almost 5,000 decorative gold pieces -- earrings, pendants and beads -- that adorned the bodies of a Scythian man and woman, presumably royalty, and dated from the fifth or sixth centuries B.C. In addition to the gold, which weighed almost 44 pounds, the archaeologists discovered items made of iron, turquoise, amber and wood. "There are many great works of art -- figures of animals, necklaces, pins with animals carved into a golden surface," said Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage Museum. "It is an encyclopedia of Scythian animal art because you have all the animals which roamed the region, such as panther, lions, camels, deer, etc. This is the original Scythian style, from the Altai region, which eventually came to the Black Sea region and finally in contact with ancient Greece, and it resembles almost an Art Nouveau style." Russian and German archaeologists excavated a Scythian burial mound on a grassy plain that locals have long called the Valley of the Kings because of the large number of burial mounds of Scythian and other ancient nomadic royalty. The fierce nomadic Scythian tribes roamed the Eurasian steppe, from the northern borders of China to the Black Sea region, in the seventh to third centuries B.C. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. they interacted with the ancient Greeks who had colonized the Black Sea region, which is now in Ukraine and southern Russia. Not surprisingly ancient Greek influence was evident in Scythian gold previously discovered, but the recent find dates from before contact with the Greeks and from the heart of Siberia where, scholars say, contact with outsiders can almost be excluded. Research on the Tuva burial mound, known as Arzhan 2, began in 1998, and to the amazement of scholars the grave was discovered to be untouched, though failed attempts by grave robbers to locate the burial chamber were evident on the sprawling, 185-foot-long, 5-foot-high mound. This was the first such discovery since the early 1700's, when Russian explorers brought Scythian treasures to Czar Peter the Great, a find that became the State Hermitage Museum's collection of Scythian gold. All burial mounds explored since then had been robbed. To avoid contamination and disturbing the items stored in the grave, the Russian and German archaelogists entered it first with a small remote-control video camera to study how burial items were originally arranged and to reconstruct the burial rituals. The discovery was made by Russian scholars from the Hermitage Museum and the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, led by the Russian archaeologist Konstantin Chugonov, who has been studying Bronze Age and Scythian sites in Tuva for 20 years. German scholars also took part in the dig and were led by Herman Parzinger and Anatoli Nagler from the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. "Tuva's Valley of the Kings has long been a major area of interest for archaeologists because it contains the largest burial mounds in the region of Tuva and in all of the Altai region," Mr. Chugonov said. "We chose to work on those mounds in greatest danger, and we chose this one because of all the major mounds it is the most damaged." About 25 percent of the excavated burial mound, which is stone slate, was destroyed when Soviet authorities built a road through the area in the 1960's. Over the years, residents walked off with pieces of the stone to use in building their houses. After its discovery, the treasure was sent to the Hermitage Museum for storage and restoration, and it will stay there until Tuva can build a museum to house the items. This is in accordance with Russian Federation law stating that items be displayed in their place of discovery so long as local authorities provide the proper conditions. Building such a museum is years away, however, Dr. Piotrovksy said. Until then they will remain in the Hermitage, and at some point will be put on display. Though the Russian-German dig began last May, preparations took almost three years. Scholars first approached the burial mound in 1998, studying it with geophysical equipment allowing them, without excavating, to determine the presence of almost 200 items inside. The first reconnaissance dig was made in the summer of 2000. "The find was not an accident, because scholars know there are burial mounds in that area, but most were robbed, and empty," Dr. Piotrovsky said. "Their success in actually finding something was a combination of hard work and luck." Scythian Grave Mounds: A team of archeologists led by Anton Gass of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has unearthed a small trove of gold objects left behind by a people known as the Scythians, a group of fierce nomads that thrived for over a thousand years in the environs of what is now southern Russia. The Scythians are believed to have been a warring people, occupying the steppes of central Eurasia from the ninth century BC to the fourth century AD—but they did not leave behind much evidence of their existence, much less their history—they built no cities and kept on the move. They did however, create grave mounds called kurgans (Slavic for tumulus, or a particular type of grave where a mound of dirt is heaped over a chamber). One particular kurgan stood in the path of a power line construction, which caused utility officials to contact Gass to investigate. He brought a team to the site expecting to find nothing but dirt, clay and sand—it had been combed over by looters many times already. But, as it turns out the looters had missed something—deep inside a layer of clay was a chamber lined with stone, inside of which lay artifacts made of gold: two vessels shaped like buckets sitting upside down. Inside the buckets were three gold cups, a finger ring, a gold bracelet and two neck rings—taken together the find adds up to seven pounds of riches. In speaking with the press, the researchers described how the vessels had intricate inscriptions on them, one depicting an elderly man slaying a younger man, and another showing griffons killing a stag and a horse. Both are so well done that the researchers were able to make out details such as hair styles, clothing types, etc. They reported also that they had found sticky dark residue on the insides of the vessels, which after analysis turned out to contain both cannabis and opium. The researchers believe the opium was used in a tea of sorts and consumed, while the cannabis was smoked. The find corresponds to the writing of Greek historian Herodotus, who described occasions where the Scythians burned a plant to produce a smoke that made them shout out loud. Scythian Kurgans: The Scythians were a much-feared, barbaric group of pre-common era tribes that ruled the Eurasian grasslands for over a thousand years. Said to be of Iranian origin, they left no cities behind, only huge burial mounds called kurgans. Solid gold artefacts discovered in a Scythian burial mound in southern Russia include two bucket-shaped vessels, three gold cups, a heavy finger ring, two neck rings, and a gold bracelet. The kurgans of the Scythians dot the Eurasian steppes from Mongolia to the Balkans, and through Ukraine and on to the Black Sea. It is from the artifacts uncovered in the kurgans that archaeologists have learned much about Scythian life and art. A massive kurgan was discovered in Stavropol, a territorial district in Southern Russia, by workers clearing the way for a power line project. Stavropol-based archaeologist Andrei Belinski began excavating the kurgan, called Sengileevskoe-2, the summer of 2013, and his finds prompted authorities to keep the site a secret until now. Solid gold artifacts, including two bucket-shaped vessels, three gold cups, a heavy finger ring, two neck rings, and a gold bracelet were unearthed. In all, the artifacts when cleaned, weighed about seven pounds (3.2 kilos). "It's a once-in-a-century discovery," says Anton Gass, an archaeologist at the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. "These are among the finest objects we know from the region." When the excavation of the kurgan began, the archaeology team didn't have great expectations of finding much because it was apparent the kurgan had been looted some time in the past. But after several weeks of digging, the team came across a thick layer of clay. After careful digging, underneath the clay they came across a large rectangular chamber lined with broad, flat stones. Inside the chamber, the team found a 2,400-year-old treasure the looters had missed. "It was definitely a surprise for us," Belinski says. "We weren't expecting to find anything like this." Once the residue was removed from the gold vessels, ornate decorations, showing great detail were revealed. One vessel shows an old bearded man slaying young warriors. The other vessel shows griffons, mythological creatures ripping apart a horse and a stag. The bleak background depicted on the vessel led Belinski to think this was a representation of the Scythian underworld. Inside the vessels, Belinski discovered a black, sticky substance. Samples were sent to a forensics laboratory for identification. The images on the vessels are an exciting find. The vessel depicting the shoes, haircuts and clothing of the old man and the warriors is amazingly lifelike. "I've never seen such a detailed representation of the clothing and weaponry of the Scythians," says Belinski. "It's so detailed you can see how the clothing was sewn." Gass thinks the vessel depicting the old man slaying young warriors is a representation of the "bastard wars" as described by the Greek historian Herodotus. As Herodotus tells the story, the Scythians were engaged in a 28-year war with their neighbors. the Persians. When the Scythians finally returned home, they found intruders in their tents. They were the bastard children of the Scythians lonely wives and their slaves. Gass believes the slaughter that ensued was important enough that it was described in detail on the vessel. Herodotus writes that the grown bastard children went forth to engage the returning warriors, and many lives on both sides were lost. Herodotus writes: one Scythian warrior turned to his fellows, saying: "What are we doing, Scythians? We are fighting our slaves, diminishing our own number when we fall, and the number of those that belong to us when they fall by our hands. Take my advice- lay spear and bow aside, and let each man fetch his horsewhip and go boldly up to them. So long as they see us with arms in our hands, they imagine themselves our equals in birth and bravery; but let them behold us with no other weapon but the whip, and they will feel that they are our slaves, and flee before us." Belinski believes the vessel has a more metaphorical meaning. This could be a representation of the power struggle that occurs when a ruler or king has died. "When a king died, there was chaos," he says. "The spirit world was upset by the death of the king, and order had to be born anew." The black, sticky substance inside the vessels was cannabis and opium residue. For Scythians, cannabis was an important part of the death ritual when a leader died. First, the body was cleaned and dressed. Then, the leader's body was taken around the region where he ruled for 40 days so that everyone could pay their respects. After the leader's body was buried, Scythians would purify their bodies by erecting small tepee-like structures. A fire was made inside the structure, and when red-hot coals were left, hemp seeds were either thrown on the hot coals or put into vessels and set on the coals. The vapors produced were intoxicating, and the out-of-body experience supposedly cleansed the soul and mind. Herodotus, in about 450 BC writes, "when, therefore, the Scythians have taken some seed of this hemp, they creep under the cloths and put the seeds on the red-hot stones; but this being put on smokes, and produces such a steam, that no Grecian vapour-bath would surpass it. The Scythians, transported by the vapour, shout aloud." It has long been believed that these "hemp rituals" were nothing more than a myth, but it is a fact this ceremony did occur. In 1929, Professor S. I. Rudenko and his team of archaeologists were digging some ancient ruins near the Altai Mountains, on the border between Siberia and Outer Mongolia. They unearthed a 20-foot deep trench about 160 square feet in size. Around the trench, they found the skeletons of horses and inside the trench was the embalmed body of a man and a large cauldron filled with the residue of cannabis seeds. It is interesting to note that the sacrifice of a horse was considered the most "prestigious" sacrificial gift to their pantheon of seven gods. The central portion of the burial mound was finally excavated in full last fall. The team found additional trenches around the kurgan, but due to political tensions, the excavating has been put on hold. "It's like a detective investigation. We don't understand it all, not immediately," says Gass. "We need to keep digging." Scythian Treasures at the Hermitage: The Hermitage collection of Scythian antiquities is renowned worldwide, its nucleus consisting of finds from burial complexes in the Crimea, Kuban basin and in the valleys of the Dnieper and Don rivers. The most attractive feature of the collection is the abundance of articles of applied art from a variety of schools and trends, with objects created in the Scythian Animal style, and items made by Greek craftsmen or imported from Oriental countries and the nearby Classical centers to the North of Black Sea and intended for Scythian noblemen. According to Scythian tradition, alongside a dead chief the tribe buried his wives, servants, armour-bearers, grooms and horses, and these burials thus contain numerous artifacts, from weapons and harness to everyday objects and a multiplicity of personal adornments. Most valuable of all is the Scythian Gold, often lavishly decorated with precious stones. Two gold shield emblems in the forms of a panther and stag – the Kelermes Panther and the Kostromsky Stag (from burial mounds in the Kuban area, 7th century BC) – are true masterpieces, which have come to symbolize the achievements of Scythian craftsmen. These two animals were hugely popular during the Scythian era and appear on many objects. No less remarkable are the articles from the burial mounds of Scythian chiefs (5th to 4th centuries BC), executed in the Graeco-Scythian style and decorated with scenes from a Scythian heroic epic: the gold comb from the Solokha burial mound; gold and silver vessels from the Kul-Oba and Chastye barrows; a silver amphora bearing relief representations of scenes from Scythian life (Chertomlyk burial mound). The detailed images on these pieces make it possible for us to picture the appearance of the Scythians, their clothes and weapons. Rich tombs beneath tumuli and ancient settlements in the area of the forested steppes, inhabited by the tribes subject to the Scythians, have also yielded hand-made clay vessels, farming tools, utensils, arms and armour and objects associated with the working of bronze and iron, both imported and of local production. Russian-Scythian Archaeology: Russian archaeologist Andrey Belinski wasn’t sure what to expect when he found himself facing a small mound in a farmer’s field at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains. To the untrained eye, the 12-foot feature looked like little more than a hillock. To Belinski, who was charged with excavating the area to make way for new power lines, it looked like a type of ancient burial mound called a kurgan. He considered the job of excavating and analyzing the kurgan, which might be damaged by the construction work, fairly routine. “Basically, we planned to dig so we could understand how it was built,” Belinski says. As he and his team began to slice into the mound, located 30 miles east of Stavropol, it became apparent that they weren’t the first people to take an interest. In fact, looters had long ago ravaged some sections. “The central part was destroyed, probably in the nineteenth century,” Belinski says. Hopes of finding a burial chamber or artifacts inside began to fade. It took nearly a month of digging to reach the bottom. There, Belinski ran into a layer of thick clay that, at first glance, looked like a natural feature of the landscape, not the result of human activity. He uncovered a stone box, a foot or so deep, containing a few finger and rib bones from a teenager. But that wasn’t all. Nested one inside the other in the box were two gold vessels of unsurpassed workmanship. Beneath these lay three gold armbands, a heavy ring, and three smaller bell-shaped gold cups. “It was a huge surprise for us,” Belinski says. “Somehow, the people who plundered the rest didn’t locate these artifacts.” As he continued to excavate the area surrounding the kurgan, he spotted postholes near the stone box, as though tree trunks had once been sunk in the earth to support a pavilion or roof. Belinski and Anton Gass of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, whom Belinski had invited to participate in the excavation, realized that they had found something far beyond a simple burial mound. In fact, some scholars think the site may have been the location of an intense ritual and subsequent burial rite performed by some of the ancient world’s most fearsome warriors. From about 900 to 100 B.C., nomadic tribes dominated the steppes and grasslands of Eurasia, from what is today western China all the way east to the Danube. All across this vast expanse, archaeological evidence shows that people shared core cultural practices. “They were all nomads, they were heavily socially stratified, they had monumental burial structures and rich grave goods,” says Hermann Parzinger, head of Berlin’s Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and former head of the German Archaeological Institute. Today, archaeologists refer to the members of this interconnected world as Scythians, a name used by the Greek historian Herodotus. SHIPPING & RETURNS/REFUNDS: We always ship books domestically (within the USA) via USPS INSURED media mail (“book rate”). Most international orders cost an additional $19.99 to $53.99 for an insured shipment in a heavily padded mailer. However this book is quite large and heavy, too large to fit into a flat rate mailer. Therefore the shipping costs are somewhat higher than what is otherwise ordinary. 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Book Title: Stroganoff: The Palace and Collections of a Russian Noble Family
Signed: No
Book Series: Historical
Ex Libris: No
Narrative Type: Nonfiction
Dimensions: 12¼ x 9¼ x 1 inch; 3½ pounds
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
Intended Audience: Young Adults, Adults
Inscribed: No
Vintage: Yes
Personalize: No
Publication Year: 2001
Type: Catalog
Format: Trade Paperback
Language: English
Era: Ancient
Personalized: No
Author: Penelope Hunter-Stiebel
Features: Illustrated
Genre: History
Topic: Ancient Art, Ancient Horsemen, Ancient Jewelry, Ancient Russia, Ancient Ukraine, Ancient World, Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, Art History, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Culture, Decorative Art, Jewelry, Medieval Art, Painting, Periods of Art, Regional History, Religious History, Renaissance Architecture, Renaissance Art, Sarmatia, Sarmatians, Scythia, Scythians, Social History, Social Sciences, Sociology, World History
Number of Pages: 256
