A Fabergé silver-gilt frame containing a miniature of Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn, workmaster Anders Nevalainen, St Petersburg, 1899-1904, the miniature circa 1760

circular, the frame with bound reed bezel, silver back, pendant loop, struck with workmaster's initials and K.Fabergé in Cyrillic, 88 standard, the miniature, unsigned, of gouache on ivory, depicting Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn (1723-1807), with powdered hair en queue, wearing a velvet coat, lace cravat, the sash and breast star of the Order of St Andrew, and the neck badge and ribbon of the Order of St Anne

Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia (1859-1919)

Lady Shelley Rolls

Sold, Christie's London, 2 April 1968, lot 44 (the sitter erroneously identified as Ivan Ivanovich Schouwaloff)

Thence by descent to the present owner

Excellent condition. Wear to the gilding. Minor surface scratches consistent with age. One pin lacking from the reverse. The miniature beautifully painted with only very slight fading to the frock coat.
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Although the advent of photography did not bring about the death of art, as some prognosticators had predicted, it dealt a near-fatal blow to the medium of portrait miniatures. The Renaissance had seen a shift in focus from the divine to the humble and human; and from iconography to portraiture. The development of enamelling techniques, coupled with the reign of Peter the Great—an Emperor working tirelessly to imbue his country with the modern fashions of Europe, helped to establish the enamelled portrait miniature as a genre of art and vertu in Russia. In an attempt to inspire his troops through self-aggrandizement, the Western-minded ruler gave each of his Colonels a miniature portrait of their Emperor (Peter I).

The biggest collection of portrait miniatures ever assembled in Russia belonged to the Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich Romanov (1859-1919). The first cousin of Emperor Alexander III, the Grand Duke had spent his childhood in Georgia, became a pacifist after fighting in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878), never married and channelled himself into scholarly pursuits. His longest-serving friend and collaborator, Constantine Brummer, described him as “a true scholar in the medieval sense—he had a passion for all knowledge, be it literary or scientific”. Because he grew up outside the Imperial palaces, the Grand Duke became the most progressive and liberal of the Romanovs. To quench his thirst for research, as well as to keep him busy, Emperor Nicholas II granted the Grand Duke unlimited access to the Romanov family archives and library. At the turn of the century, after publishing numerous historical papers, the Grand Duke achieved his dream of befriending Tolstoy.

Akin to history, the Grand Duke’s exploits were not without irony. In the year of the 1905 Revolution, he exhibited some 2500 objects from his collection in the Tauride Palace, which would become home of the Russian government that the Revolution forced upon the Empire. Positioned as an outsider, he foresaw the Empire’s demise clearer than any Romanov, and by the same token was powerless to stop it. On 1 October 1905 he wrote to Tolstoy: “I suffer all the more from my silence because every one of the government’s flaws is so blindingly clear to me and I see no remedy except in a radical change from everything that now exists.” In spite of such sentiment, the Grand Duke created the Archival Commission in 1914 for the preservation of Russian history. He had also made extensive plans for the centennial celebration of Alexander II’s birth, which would have taken place in April 1918. The Bolshevik Revolution resulted in the death of both projects; it lead to the Grand Duke’s exile in 1916 and execution three years later.

Nicholas Mikhailovich believed that history is best told through pictures. This lead him to collect, catalogue and exhibit his miniature portraits of historical figures. From his correspondence with French historian Frédéric Masson, we can deduce the attraction and appeal that these objects possessed and projected for the Grand Duke: “The prince [in the picture] is enchanted with his promotion and carries…the epaulets of a general,” he wrote on 1 May 1900, describing a portrait miniature of a different prince: “The more I see it, the more I know him,” he concluded. After his death, six of his miniatures made their way to The Hermitage and two ended up at the Russian Museum (both in St Petersburg); some wound up in the D. David-Weill collection of miniatures and enamels, others in The Clore Collection of portrait miniatures.

This Fabergé-framed miniature portrait is of Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn (1723-1807). It was part of the Grand Duke’s collection of miniatures and features in his five-volume work on Russian Portraits of the 18th and 19th centuries (re-issued 2000; book I, p. 77). Golitsyn occupied a number of posts. His career began in the Russian consulate in Holland (1742), continued in France (1749-1755) and England (1755-1761), where he served as Russian Ambassador, and finished on home soil, where he was Senator (1774), Chief Chamberlain and Privy Councillor (1775), as well as Vice Chancellor for more than a decade (1762-1775). He was held in high esteem by Emperors Paul I and Alexander I, and was a favourite of Empress Maria Feodorovna, who wrote to him often, even after his retirement in 1778.

Golitsyn was involved in the coup d’état that brought Catherine II to the throne. Although initially assigned to Peter III, during the July 1762 coup Golitsyn was sent to deliver a letter to Catherine from her husband asking for clemency and safe passage to what is now Germany. Instead of returning with a reply, Golitsyn never returned at all and joined the future Empress as part of her distinguished entourage. After that, he did not play politics, refused to align himself with any single group when disagreements arose, did not participate in gossip and did not indulge intrigues. Following his retirement, he became patron to an educational institution and oversaw the construction of a hospital that bore his name. At the time of death, Golitsyn had amassed an impressive art collection of his own, which he left to the hospital in its entirety and with the proviso that it would remain there untouched. Not fifteen years after his death, the executors of Golitsyn’s will decided to auction off the collection instead; most of it ended up in foreign hands and was taken abroad.

The portrait shows Prince A.M. Golitsyn at the peak of his career. His demeanour is confident yet curious; self-assured without being entirely self-satisfied. The green background compliments the sitter’s light-brown frock and silver wig. His gaze is the part of history no written document can transmit. It contains what Aleksei Levykin, director of the State Historical Museum in Moscow, called “the aroma of an epoch”. Golitsyn is pictured wearing the Order of St Anne and the Order of St Andrew, awarded to him in 1762, which helps to date the original portrait.