Imperial Framed Miniatures (1896): Art, History and Details

Imperial Framed Miniatures (1896) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Johannes Zehngraf (Russian, 1857–1908); Mikhail Evlampievich Perkhin (Russian, 1860–1903); House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The giving of miniatures had long been a common practice among wealthy and aristocratic families by the time Fabergé began combining portraits with his richly decorated frames. The Russian imperial family delighted in having these personal mementos and commissioned many different miniatures to place around their private apartments, providing a warm family atmosphere in an otherwise highly formal existence.

Object facts

• Title: Imperial Framed Miniatures
• Date: 1896
• Creator attribution: Johannes Zehngraf (Russian, 1857–1908); Mikhail Evlampievich Perkhin (Russian, 1860–1903); House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918)
• Culture: Russia, St. Petersburg
• Type: Portrait Miniature
• Technique: jade, gold, rubies, gouache, ivory, glass
• Dimensions: Overall: 15.3 x 5 x 5 cm (6 x 1 15/16 x 1 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1966.458

A detail from the museum

The tsar gave the miniature of himself to the tsarina, and in turn, she gave the miniature of their firstborn child, Grand Duchess Olga Nicoaievna to the tsar a year after their daughter's birth. .

Collection credit

The India Early Minshall Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hawley, Henry H. Fabergé and His Contemporaries: The India Early Minshall Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.
• Habsburg, Géza von, and David Park Curry. Fabergé in America. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996
• Hawley, Henry H., "Jeweler to the Czars", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 37 no. 03, March 1997

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.