The centuries-long pursuit of the finest Italian silk weaves by the Russian court and church and the prodigious sums they spent on them have left Russia, despite losses during war and revolution, with an immense patrimony of rich and rare Italian textiles, only a fraction of which have ever been put on general public view.
Between them the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Kremlin Museum in Moscow have well over 5,000 examples of historic Italian textiles.
These two institutions have joined forces with the Hermitage Italia Foundation and Prato’s Textile Museum to lay out some of these fabulous wares, and relate the story of how they found their way east to the centers of Russian political and ecclesiastical power, in “The Style of the Czar: Art and Fashion between Italy and Russia from the 14th to the 18th Century.”
via: The New York Times
