The history of the Hermitage’s collection of glyptics – cameos and intaglios – dates right back to 1764, for engraved gems were among Catherine II’s very first acquisitions. By the 1930s the Museum had more than 20 000 pieces which were eventually to be divided into three groups, each of equal importance. By far the larger part is that of Western European gems (although it later proved to include a number of works by Russian engravers). Today this group comprises some 11 000 individual pieces and forms part of the Department of Western European Applied Art.
Such is the scale of the collection that it covers all the main stages in the development of gem-engraving (the engraving of miniature stones) in Western Europe and Russia over the course of some eight hundred years, from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. This superb body of works allows us to illustrate and to study all the main stylistic trends and genres, the different national schools and the individual oeuvre of leading masters. We can also appreciate the wide variety of stones used by engravers and the wealth of technical devices they employed.
Svetlana Kokareva
