Venerable Bedeski
ART. By ROY STRONG
Make your way with eyes semi-closed past dreary twentieth-century books, photos and watercolours and open them again near the sign that informatively reads 'Middle Ages,' a period summed up succinctly by •three exhibits. The first is a spectacular and moving object, one which the uninitiated could easily sweep by on account of its unprepossessing appearance. This is the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History, a manuscript in kipper-coloured ink, written in the second quarter of the eighth century and con- taining an inscription in Bede's hand. It is an infinite rarity and a precious reminder of a period when England practically alone carried the torch of art and learning amidst a sea of barbarism. Near by there is a second reminder in a richly illuminated Northumbrian book of Gospels of the same date.
But the story really begins with some mar- vellous English royal documents from the Russian state archives, gloriously fresh, with whirls and twirls in gold in the margin and illuminated portrait initials. This first contact in the sixteenth century remains the most fascinat- ing, beginning in 1553 when Chancellor and Willoughby voyaged to Muscovy. Ivan the Ter- rible taunts Elizabeth I by letter 'that there be other men that do rule . . . And you flow in your maidenly estate like a maid.' Later in her reign she got her own back in the lank person of Sir Jerome Bowes, here shown resplendent in white and gold in the year that he travelled to the Tsar's court. Although the French am- bassador had had his hat nailed to his head for keeping it on in the imperial presence, Bowes defiantly wore his and scored his point as the representative of a queen 'who does not vail her bonnet or bare her head to any prince living.' Elizabeth knew her man.
These embassies that came to and fro in the Tudor and Jacobean periods resulted in Russia having the largest assemblage of English plate of the period. No one interested in the age of Shakespeare (Muscovites appear in Love's Labour's Lost) can afford to miss the chance of seeing these treasures. In the same way that the Chinese despised the crudity of what they manufactured for the European chinoiserie market, the Jacobeans must have unloaded some of their most barbarous productions on the Russian court. A phantasmagoria of harpies, grotesques, writhing serpents, cartouches and strapwork protrudes from these silver mon- strosities, from salts, pots, cups, and flagons. Russians do not, it must be remembered, clean their silver; this lack-hi:stye is not the result of an absence of domestic staff.
At a later period, when under Peter and Catherine the Great Russia -became westernised, it is the English who so often turn up as artists, architects, physicians, engineers, soldiers and sailors in imperial service. My favourite object
the vast black fox fur muff, an imperial pre- rogative, presented by Catherine the Great to Thomas Dimsdale for inoculating the Grand Duke Alexander and his brother. Later, in Napoleonic times, the two countries drew closer in the struggle against French domination and there is a ravishing picture by Thomas Phillips of the Tsar and other foreign royalty visiting Petworth. They burst in, through french windows, a cascade of frogging and furs, black boots and yelping spaniels, ruffled satins and bowed ribbons, to take part in what looks like a riotous family party. How jolly all this seems in retrospect when faced with the cases dedi- cated to Lenin in London, the socialist revolu- tion, the Second World War and the sword of Stalingrad, or Volgograd as we must now learn to call it. It is best to ignore the relentless politi- cal slant given to the modern material and indulge one's eyes in a last glimpse of loveliness, the designs by Bakst, Benois and Goncharova or scenery and costumes for Le Pavilion d'Armide, Coq d'Or and The Sleeping Beauty.
Considering the short space of time at the dis- posal of the organisers, the exhibition is little short of a miracle. It is conceived on the single- track system, basically in with the Venerable Bede and out with Wilson and Kosygin locked 4n friendly greeting From the point of view of design, it is simple, clean-cut and effective, although felt must surely come in colours other than military scarlet and light can be varied in intensity. Once the original design statement is Made, therefore, no surprise or excitement follows. And by the end of the exhibition, with case-loads of photographs of Lenin and socialist realist art raping the eyes, it desperately needs krting up of a different sort. There are omis- sions: inevitably the mad Tsar Paul and the last of the Romanovs get swept under the carpet. And it would be true to say that the over- whelming majority of good-quality visual material, apart from Bede and the Kremlin silver, comes from English sources. The Royal Collection, the English museums and private collectors have emptied themselves of what they have, but not even Reynolds's Infant Hercules, Commissioned by Catherine the Great, let alone any of the Houghton pictures have been sent from the Hermitage. And the handful of knock- out .theatre designs comes from British col- lections.
In a way, this exhibition tends .10 make a balloon- out of a bubble. Down to the close of the nineteenth century relations between England and Russia were political and diplomatic. The „great cultural impact came late and was the music of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, the plays of Chek- hov and Turgenev and the imperial ballet 'tradition as transplanted into England by the great Diaghilev—incredibly difficult, but not im- possible, to convey in exhibition terms. Although the present show successfully traces in textbook style what happened over the centuries, the best ..kAnglo-Russian -exhiliition remains the unforget- tably romantic Diaghilev Exhibition in 1955.
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