Exhibition 'Gifts Fit for a Tsar'

About exhibition

Over its 185-year history the collections of the Arkhangelsk Regional Museum have amassed numerous relics testifying to the significant role of the Arkhangelsk North in Russian history. The exhibition presents gifts and donations from the Romanov tsars and members of their families from the collections of two museums — the Arkhangelsk Regional Museum and the Kargopol Historical, Architectural and Art Museum — as well as from the State Archive of the Arkhangelsk Region. Among the exhibits are many items connected with the dynasty’s support of northern monasteries, including the Siysky Monastery, which many of the tsars regarded as their spiritual patrimony and aided. Some of the relics are truly priceless, among them a small folding icon, “The Saviour on the Throne. Saints Dominikeya and Maria,” painted on cypress panels; details of a hegumen’s vestments — the shoulder-piece of a phelonion, an epitrachelion and a nabedrennik (epigonation) — made of velvet with an exquisite pattern of interlaced gold foliage. The exhibition will also feature royal donations from other monasteries of the Russian North. One of these is a set of vestments in gold brocade with a pattern of large floral bouquets, presented to the Solovetsky Monastery by Emperor Alexander II in 1859.