Embedded within the text panel for a display entitled ‘Cameo Fever’ in the National Museum of Scotland’s latest exhibition, Catherine the Great: An Enlightened Empress, is a remarkable image – an engraved depiction of Athena seated at a table whilst examining a collection of cameos, after the Scottish painter David Allan. The image, which had formed the frontispiece to a 1790 catalogue of cameos by the Scottish gem-engraver James Tassie, is a particularly apposite choice for an exhibition celebrating a woman who was wise, militant and acquisitive in equal measure. 

The exhibition, which opened on 13 July 2012 and runs until 21 October, showcases a wealth of objects taken from the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and provides an unprecedented and arresting opportunity to view items from Russia’s imperial heritage. Organised in close co-operation with the Hermitage, the National Museum of Scotland plays host to around 600 items from their collections, which construct an intriguing portrait of this fascinating woman, and the times in which she lived. The exhibition, comprising several darkened rooms, is attractively curated and lit, with intelligent displays of these glittering imperial riches. The exhibition is also remarkable for the sheer wealth and variety of treasures displayed – paintings, porcelain, metalwork, intaglio gemstones, furniture, dress and even weaponry – a highly evocative mélange that works to conjure a picture of the decadent material life of eighteenth-century Russia. 

Whilst the first few sections include many superlative portraits of Catherine the Great (1729-1796), such as Vigilius Eriksen’s magisterial image of Catherine II in her Coronation Robes dating from around 1762, the real triumph of the exhibition is its display of decorative arts. Many of the included wares specifically relate to the palaces and locations in which they would have originally been housed, constructing a vibrant picture of court life under Catherine. For example, Catherine’s delicate Frog Service, which was commissioned from Josiah Wedgwood in 1773 and depicts (amongst numerous other British scenes) a number of picturesque Scottish castles, is included in a display dedicated to the fascinating neo-Gothic Chesme Palace, built in 1777.  Though in terms of beauty the service does not stand up to the glamour of the infamous Sèvres Cameo Service, commissioned just three years later in 1776, its display is nevertheless emblematic of Catherine’s much under-researched relationship with Scotland, a theme that is traced throughout the exhibition and is the subject of a fascinating essay in the exhibition’s catalogue. Other standout items include an impressive and beautifully carved carnival sledge, innovatively set against a set-like print depicting a snowy imperial carnival; and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s stunning portrait of the Daughters of the Emperor Paul I, the Grand Princess Alexandra and Elena Pavlovna (1796). Apart from the high quality of objects included in the exhibition, these evocative viewing strategies are key to its success, often attempting to replicate the complex displays that the contemporary viewer would have been familiar with. A cabinet of commemorative ornaments typifies this curatorial approach, comprising a crowded display that gestures both to the sheer number of these war trophies as well as their original eighteenth-century display. 

Examining her entry into Russia, her religious conversion, extra-marital liaisons, and the eventual success of her coup d’état, the exhibition is broadly chronological, following the various stages of Catherine’s remarkable life. In accordance with this model, the viewer is literally ‘kept out in the cold’ in the snowy landscapes of Prussia before entering the exhibits proper; ahead, and through a pair of golden doors monogrammed with the Imperial eagle, an intimidating portrait of the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (1709-1762) heralds the viewer’s entry into mother Russia. It is clear then, that this is an exhibition about transformation: from German to Russian, princess to Empress, from youth to maturity. As well as its generally biographical arrangement and concentration, the exhibition also examines the many roles that Catherine fulfilled – Empress, mother, lover, and perhaps most importantly in this context, patron of the arts. As such, the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are among the first scholarly examinations in English of Catherine’s activities as a patron since Dimitri Shvidkovsky’s publication ‪The Empress and the Architect‬: ‪British Architecture and Gardens at the Court of Catherine the Great (Yale, 1996). ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

In examining Catherine as ‘Enlightened Empress’ – a label that corresponds interestingly, but not altogether comfortably, with Voltaire’s paradoxical designation of Catherine as an ‘Enlightened despot’ – the exhibition presents the Empress as an active member of the Republic of Letters, particularly in light of her relationship with her ‘mentors’ the Philosophes. A rapacious consumer of both ancient and modern literature, Catherine maintained intellectually fruitful relationships with Voltaire and Diderot among others, an association that is recalled in the exhibition via a stimulating display of portrait busts of, and quotes from, her principal conversants. Despite this situation of Catherine decidedly within Enlightenment culture however, the exhibition never truly comes to terms with the somewhat oxymoronic notion of an ‘Enlightened’ autocrat, and is instead happy to treat Catherine’s intellectual and political proclivities as entirely separate realms of enquiry. 

Despite its appropriacy in a discussion of the great Russian Empress, David Allan’s image of Athena is also emblematic of the exhibition’s lack – a clear examination of how this powerful ruler fashioned herself as the ‘Enlightened Empress’ of the exhibition’s title. A pertinent example of this is the absence of attention given to Catherine’s self-imag(in)ing as Minerva/Athena – a theme that penetrates portrait and material object alike throughout the exhibition – presenting an interesting curatorial opportunity missed. As such, the exhibition neglects to engage with some of the most interesting academic work being done on female agency and self-fashioning in Enlightenment Europe, such as Melissa Hyde’s essay ‘Under the Sign of Minerva: Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s Portrait of Madame Adélaïde’ in the stimulating Ashgate volume Women, Art and the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe edited by Melissa Hyde and Jennifer Milam (2003), which specifically examines the relationship between early-modern forms of portrayal and the figure of the goddess. Nevertheless, the accompanying exhibition catalogue is lavishly illustrated and comprised of several provocative essays, each of which corresponds with a major theme of the exhibition, as well as a full catalogue of all the objects included. 

The exhibition is timed to coincide with the conference at the University of Edinburgh, Enlightened Russian: The Russian Language Society in the Age of Catherine the Great (the programme of which can be accessed here at the following link: http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/literatures-languages-cultures/dashkova/research-resources/current-research), which hints at the sort of inter- and multi-disciplinary work that this exhibition may go on to foster in the future. Whilst its overall examination of Catherine may not be penetrating, such issues must not detract from the exhibition’s main achievement, which has been to provide an apposite and visually provocative setting for some of the Hermitage’s most stunning objects from an equally fascinating period in Russia’s imperial history.