A Tale of Two Polities

The exhibition revels in the ritual and splendor of the court life of the Tudors, Stuarts and early Romanovs.

By Alastair Gill

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: April 3, 2013 (Issue # 1753)

for spt English ambassador Jerome Bowes raised hackles on his posting in Russia.

What happens when an expanding 16th-century European power accidentally comes into contact with a newly forged semi-Asiatic state with imperial and mercantile aspirations of its own?

This is the essential question posed by “Treasures of the Royal Courts: Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian Tsars,” an exhibition that opened last month at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum that chronicles the relationship between the British monarchy and the Russian tsars, from the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Ivan the Terrible in the early 16th century to the early Romanovs and the re-establishment of the English monarchy after the English Civil War in the mid-17th century.

The centerpiece of the show, which revels in the pomp and ritual of the court life of the era, is a stunning “buffet” of British and French silver from the Kremlin Armory Museum – a treasure trove that would never have survived to the present day had it remained in England. Alongside the Moscow silver, visitors can admire portraits, jewelry, armor, firearms, clothing and domestic objects. Some of these items were diplomatic gifts, shipped to Moscow via a six-week voyage through Arctic waters; others demonstrate the wealth and power of the courts and introduce prominent figures of the era.

In one respect this is a classic story of two nations furthering their own interests through mutual cooperation and flattery, yet it is also a tale of the collision of two cultures from opposite ends of a continent, with all the attendant misunderstandings that such encounters inevitably entail.

The establishment of diplomatic relations between the two nations in 1553 is given context by a 16th-century vellum and ink map of the northern Russian coast that is accompanied by a hand-colored chart of Muscovy and the Tartar lands.

In fact, the event was an accident: English explorer Richard Chancellor, in search of a North-East passage to China and new markets for English cloth, instead reached what is now Arkhangelsk, in the White Sea. Hearing of the arrival of this exotic foreigner, Ivan the Terrible invited him to Moscow for a royal audience, and Chancellor made the 1000-kilometer journey south by horse-drawn sleigh. Chancellor came away from his meeting with the tsar with letters and promises of trade privileges, as well as a new market for English wool. The Tsar was delighted to have acquired a new sea trade route and lavished gifts of furs and other goods on Chancellor.

This led to the founding of the chartered London Muscovy Company in 1555 and the beginnings of a flourishing trade: Russia sent furs, rope, grain, wax and the ship masts that were vital to support England’s growing navy, while in return it received cloth, gold, spices, silver and weapons.

for spt This gilded silver water pot is part of a 20-piece ‘buffet’ on loan from Moscow.

It was English silver that was the most highly-prized of these goods, however, and the sheer luxury of the 20 pieces on loan from the Kremlin indicates that the English monarchs were well aware of the esteem in which the tsars held this precious metal – silver was the most common form of gift sent to Muscovy. Arranged and presented as it was originally kept in the Kremlin, this dazzling ensemble of ewers, basins and pots made of gilded silver, illuminated by spotlights in an otherwise low-lit chamber, utterly steals the show.

These gifts were manufactured in Britain and France – amusingly, some were secondhand offerings – and all were dutifully marked with their weight and provenance on arrival in Moscow. Interestingly, the silverware would not be here today had it not been shipped to Muscovy, as almost all luxury silver items in England were melted down during the country’s civil war.

Besides the silver, the guns are also of note, including an English hunting rifle given as an ambassadorial gift. Its stock is inlaid with mother-of-pearl and engraved on both sides with Muscovy’s heraldic emblem, the two-headed eagle.

Visitors to the exhibition, which runs through mid-July, can also admire a small-scale model of the earliest surviving English coach, a gift from James I to Tsar Boris Godunov. Sadly the original, which is kept in the Kremlin, is not on show, though a video of the vehicle accompanies the exhibit.

Walking from room to room, one is reminded on a number of occasions that the two states did not always see eye to eye on matters of protocol.

A portrait of courtier Jerome Bowes, for example, shows an ambassador whose controversial diplomatic mission to Moscow in 1583 caused outrage on account of his irreverent and provocative attitude towards Ivan the Terrible. After Ivan’s death in 1584, Bowes was dismissed by the new tsar, Fyodor I, to which he responded by discarding the tsar’s diplomatic letters and “paltry present” on his way out of the country.

“The English have wrought a terrible deed, in killing their sovereign, King Carlus, to the death,” reads a quotation by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, made on hearing of the execution of Charles I, an event which led to the severing of diplomatic relations between the two countries for several years in 1649.

for spt Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich severed ties with England on the death of Charles I.

Perhaps these misunderstandings were to be expected. One of the lasting impressions given by the paintings on view is of the distinctly Asiatic nature of 16th- and 17th-century Muscovy. The diplomats of the time, dressed in the traditional Russian court dress of fur hats and sable-lined Persian silk gowns embroidered with precious stones, strike a marked contrast with the conventions of contemporary European dress.

Particularly telling is a woodcut depicting a Russian delegation to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II at Regensburg in Bavaria. In this scene, Ivan the Terrible’s son heads the delegation, bearing the “letter of credentials” upon a red cushion, while behind him a mass of robed delegates hold sables and furs – a strange host from an Oriental land.

Yet despite the differences – which continue to challenge Russo-British diplomacy even today – the exhibition is perhaps more notable for the oddly symbiotic relationship it highlights between two nations then at very different stages of development. This was a classic example of a relationship which was of mutual benefit to both parties at a time when both were beginning to flex their geopolitical muscles.

One of the most enduring legacies of this relationship is an example of true living history: The popular pelicans in London’s St. James Park are the direct descendants of a pair of the birds brought to England by the Russian ambassador back in 1662.

“Treasures of the Royal Courts: Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian Tsars” runs through July 14 at the V & A Museum in London. For more information visit www.vam.ac.uk