The Hermitage Rooms at London’s Somerset House offer visitors an introduction to Russia’s premier museum, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, widely considered to be one of the four greatest museums in the world. The museum’s collection runs to some three million items including one of the world’s greatest collections of Old Master paintings, classical antiquities, Oriental art and items excavated by archaeologists throughout the former Soviet Union.
Since March 25 and through Oct. 3, the Hermitage Rooms have been hosting one of the most significant exhibitions of Islamic art to be held in London in the last three decades. “Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands,” features Islamic Art from the State Hermitage Museum and the Khalili Collection. The masterpieces on display at the show represent the finest decorative arts of Islam — calligraphy, textiles, jewels, metalwork, ceramics and paintings, ranging in date from the 9th to the 19th century and covering an area stretching from Spain and the Arab world to Persia and the Indian Subcontinent.
In the exhibition each of the Hermitage Rooms is organized to convey important aspects of Islamic artistic production, with key works of art set in context. The first gallery celebrates the Majesty of God, highlighting the abstract art created in the service of the Divine. The beauty of calligraphy used as a vehicle for the Qur’an is shown through Qur’anic manuscripts, prayer rugs and tile panels bearing Qur’anic verses and rich arabesque decoration.
Other rooms show more worldly art. Gallery IV contains the famous jewels from the Mughal treasury, sent as a diplomatic gift to the Princess (later Empress) Elizabeth of Russia by Nadir Shah after he sacked Delhi in 1739. Another room celebrates the interaction of East and West. A 10th-century rock crystal lamp, carried off by Crusaders and mounted in gold and enamels in Italy in the 16th century, is shown together with sabers, daggers and other arms richly embellished with jewels. These are complemented by oil paintings of Qajar rulers wearing such arms, and similar paintings of the ladies of their courts, in imitation of Western paintings and offering a curious blend of Oriental and European styles.
The exhibition was mounted thanks to considerable international support, including that of Professor and Mrs. Nasser D. Khalili, Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), Tarek Juffali, the Suliman S. Olayan Foundation and Rashed Abdulrahman Alrashed & Sons. Examples of the art on display in the London exhibition may be viewed through www.hermitagerooms.org.uk.
