Now, look at these paintings. Do you feel enchanted, stunned, enraged, baffled by them? I bet you don't. But these paintings were absolutely sensational when they were made.
I estimate the tsarina you see left is wearing about half a billion in today's euro's worth of diamonds and pearls. The girl to the right seems caught in the act when she donned the most prized possession of her mistress, a set of pearl earrings.
Pearls were handed down in families for centuries until they lost their value with the arrival of cultivated pearls in 1907. Before that, pearls were more expensive than diamonds.
It takes about 12.000 pearl shells to get one good pearl. It takes bout 15.000 pearl shells to find one big pearl. And it goes up from there. When you have to dive deep for these shells by just holding your breath and find them in the wild of the sea, you can imagine how difficult it was to get them.
The painting on the left shows Tsarina Maria Feodorovna (1847 – 1928) in a famous more than life-size painting by the Russian artist Ivan Kramskoi (1837-1887). Born as Marie Sophie Frederikke Dagmar, she all of a sudden became princess when her father became King of Denmark in 1863 due to the extinction of the royal line. This made her and her sister eligible for royal marriage. She was married to the Russian Tsarevitz (1845-1894) in 1866 and became Tsarina ("empress") when her husband was crowned Russian Tsar in 1881. This painting is not dated but must have been painted between 1881 and 1885. She is the mother of the deposed Tsar Nicolas II (1868 - 1918). Her elderly sister, by the way, Alexandra, married Prince Edward who succeeded Queen Victoria in 1901 and thus became Queen Consort of the United Kingdom and its Dominions as well as Empress of India. In short, both sisters became empress of immense empires. Not bad for two sisters from Schleswig-Holstein.
The painting on the right is a cropped version of the world-famous painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), The Girl with the Pearl Earring (1665-1667).
You can see these paintings in real life in the Hermitage exhibition "Jewels! The Glitter of the Russian Court" of the Tsar, Amsterdam - St. Petersburg, and in the permanent collection of the Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague.
I certainly recommend you do that, if only once in your life.
As of this writing, the Feodorovna painting is in Hermitage Amsterdam.
Sunday Morning Rumination #20.
Amsterdam, September 9, 2020.
#sundaymorningrumination #pearls #Hermitage #Mauritshuis #Feodorovna #jewels # HermitageAmsterdam #billioneuro #TheGirlWIthThePearlEarring #Vermeer #JohannesVermeer #Dagmar # Kramskoi
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