sehepunkte 6 (2006), Nr. 12

Renée E. Kistemaker et al.: The Paper Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg c.1725-1760

Tsar Peter the Great was fascinated by Western science. In order to introduce it to the Russian Empire in 1724 he became the founder of both an academy of sciences and a museum in St. Petersburg.

The museum became one of the first public museums in the world and it soon acquired fame, unfortunately though, much of its early collections are now lost. This happened because of a fire in 1747, objects were dispersed over other museums and numerous objects were also lost over the ages. Nowadays the collection of the early 18^th century is dispersed over three locations in St. Petersburg: The Academy of Sciences, the Hermitage and the Museum of Russia.

However, the early collection of Peter's museum does live on on paper because from 1725 onwards the objects were drawn by artists who were working for the museum and the academy. These draughtsmen were employed to enable scholars to publish books with the best illustrations possible. Circa 4000 to 5000 watercolors were produced between 1725 and 1760. They were stored in 58 boxes and made accessible by a contemporary catalogue written in Latin. Of this collection of drawings 2000 are preserved, still in the original boxes. The 18^th century catalogue still exists and was reused to arrange the material in this book and on the accompanying DVD. A selection of 600 drawings is reproduced and commented on in the book and all the 2000 remaining drawings today are reproduced on the DVD.

The collection of drawings is a fascinating one because it is as if we stepped into an early 18^th century time capsule. This is how Peter the Great and men around him looked at the world and tried to classify their finds and conclusions. The collection is a fascinating one for another reason because through this collection we also look at the world of collecting in the Dutch Republic in the late 17^th and early 18^th century. This is so because Peter the Great came to the Dutch Republic to study there and this is also where he acquired collections from Dutch collectors like Frederik Ruysch and Albert Seba. One of the artists that worked in St. Petersburg on these watercolors was Maria Dorothea Gsell, the daughter of Maria Sybilla Merian, well-known for her studies and drawings of the natural world of Surinam. The intimate relations between Tsar Peter and Amsterdam in the years before and after 1700 were in a way reproduced for this project 300 years later. The work is the result of a cooperation of a team of four scholars: Renée Kistemaker and Debora Meijers from the Netherlands and Natalya Kopenaneva and Georgy Vilinbakhov from Russia.

Their study of The Paper Museum has a long history, as it usually goes with a project of this scope. In 1996 the Amsterdam Historisch Museum organized an exhibition on the relations between Tsar Peter and the Netherlands. This exhibition triggered the project to really get it rolling. But in a way the project has a somewhat longer history. Four years before the aforementioned exhibition, in 1992, the Amsterdams Historisch Museum organized an exhibition on the topic of collecting in the Netherlands in the period 1585-1735. Renée Kistemaker was one of the organizers of this beautiful exhibition. So in way one might say that this project took over ten years to be realized.

For the modern eye the Paper Museum is an intriguing mixture of a historical and an ethnographic museum, a natural history and a science museum, a store of antiques and curiosities and an art museum.

The curious spectator goes over pages filled with antique coins, a miniature of a windmill, animals and plants from all over the globe, wooden shoes, a wax baby in a glass box, a bathing suit, fishing gear made out of seal skin, a boy with deformed hands and feet, astronomical instruments, an ivory boat.

It is all described, arranged and reproduced in this book, a book of dedication and of the highest professional standard. One can learn from this book how the world of collecting and the creation of museums worked in the Dutch Republic and in Russia in the decades before and after 1700. But not only that, in the introductory essay the reader gets insight in the broader European perspective. In this essay we travel from the Danish court to the French court of Louis XIV and from the cabinets of private collectors in England to collectors in Germany or Italy.

A beautiful overview in a beautiful book, which, allow me a final 'Dutch' remark, is quite cheap for all what is being offered.