From Russia with love: Catherine the Great’s enlightened world

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Patricia Andrew is dazzled by Catherine the Great’s art and culture, on display in Edinburgh

Dangerous and generous, romantic but with a will of steel, Catherine the Great (1729–96) was one of Russia’s most successful rulers, and one of the greatest art collectors of all time. This exhibition, presented in partnership with the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, is a unique UK showing, and one which everybody – art specialist or not – will be able to enjoy. It is a study of cultural collecting on a truly stupendous scale, and one that uses the development of a collection as an illustration of power and intellectual curiosity. The display of stunning art and dazzling wealth both charts, and explains, a great deal about Catherine and her reign as Empress.

The most fascinating aspect of the story is that she was born to none of this. In fact, she started life as a minor German princess, Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst. This background – royal, but of a royal family too minor to be any threat to Russia – made Sophie an ideal wife for the nephew and heir of Elizabeth, Empress of Russia. So at only fourteen years of age she was brought to St Petersburg to be a safe, pliant wife. She learnt fast. Determined to succeed, she mastered the Russian language and entered the Russian Orthodox Church, where she became Catherine and left Sophie behind.  

She discovered she had little in common with her dim and boorish husband, but prudently put up with 18 years of lying low (during which she learnt a great deal more) until the death of the Empress Elizabeth. Catherine’s husband was regarded as a very unreliable heir, and the astute Catherine seized her opportunity, claiming the throne herself – while he was deposed and then murdered by the brother of one of her lovers. She  was crowned in 1762, and set about consolidating her position by cultural as well as by military force. Looking to Russian tradition, she made religious pilgrimages within the country and was seen in outfits based on old Russian costumes. But she also looked west, to what she perceived as the modern world, corresponding in French with the stars of the Enlightenment. During her 34 years as Empress, she transformed St Petersburg with western European cultural influences, magnificent palaces and collections.

Catherine’s cultural contacts and collecting were very personal. The French philosopher Denis Diderot was invited to St Petersburg while Voltaire described her as ‘the brightest star in the North’ – and she bought both their libraries. From James Tassie she bought paste cameos, amassing the largest collection of ‘Tassies’ in the world. From Josiah Wedgwood she ordered the largest single table service he ever produced, decorated with 1222 individual views of Britain. It is known as the Green Frog Service, owing to the little image of a green frog on each piece, an image taken from the name of the Palace for which it was made; the examples on show are Scottish subjects, including the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling, and views of Ailsa Craig and Inverness.

Many Scots were employed by Catherine, and the exhibition naturally celebrates this connection. The individuals we meet include her personal physician, Dr John Rogerson; the great Samuel Greig, who rose high in the Russian navy (a navy in which many officers were Scots); and the architect Charles Cameron, who designed magnificent neo-classical buildings.

This large Scottish presence led to reciprocal visits to Scotland, such as one by Princess Dashkova, a confidante of Catherine, who stayed in Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh when her son attended the University 1776–82. She became acquainted with several of Scotland’s brightest enlightenment thinkers, and on returning to Russia was appointed Director of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, the first woman in the world to lead a national science academy. She also founded the Imperial Academy of the Russian Language. The University of Edinburgh now runs the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre.

The exhibits here, astonishing in their range, make for a sumptuous exhibition. The accompanying publicationcomprises eight illustrated essays by experts in the fields of Russian history and art, followed by a selected catalogue of the exhibits. I had expected a doorstopper of a catalogue, but this medium-sized book, containing the fruits of recent research and evaluation of Catherine and her collections by the foremost experts, is in fact far a more welcome and digestible account, and very readable indeed.

The catalogue  Catherine the Great: An Enlightened Empress edited by Godfrey Evans  is published by NMS Enterprises, 2012. 208 pp.  Over 200 colour & mono illus. ISBN 978-1-905267-74-3 (pb) 978 1 905267 6 82 (hb)