Prince Andrei Alexandrovich of Russia: An Imperial silver triptych icon, Ovchinnikov, Moscow, 1897

in Old Russian style, with two folding panels forming a cusped ogee arch, raised bracket hinges and clasp, the reverse engraved in Russian ‘Parents’ Blessings to a Son/ Andrei Alexandrovich/ born 12 January 1897’ below a budded cross and hinged hanging loop, the central interior painted with St Andrew flanked by St Xenia and St Alexander, within scroll borders on gilt grounds, 84 standard, in original Ovchinnikov wood case, the silk lining inscribed in ink with initials A.A., and with original Ovchinnikov cardboard box

Given by Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna and Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich to their first son, Prince Andrei Alexandrovich of Russia, after his birth in 1897

Thence by descent

Excellent condition. The leaves of gilding to the background of the painting having worn to the ground in places. The lid of the wooden box very slightly askew and ill-fitting, the base of the card box having come apart at the corners.
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The birth of Prince Andrei Alexandrovich of Russia, the eldest nephew of Emperor Nicholas II, on 12/24 January 1897, the occasion celebrated by the gift of this icon from his parents, was recounted by his youngest daughter more than a century later: ‘My father was born in the Winter Palace in St Petersburg while the Dowager Empress and the Tsar played patience in the next room.  On the insistence of his grandmother, his birth was marked by the full twenty-one-gun-salute normally reserved for a new Grand Duke; not the fifteen-gun salute he should have had as the grandson of an Emperor.  The Dowager Empress wanted to see her daughter Xenia’s children treated as Grand Dukes, despite their lesser title’ (see Princess Olga Romanoff, ‘My father and his family,’ Royalty Digest Quarterly, 2007, issue 1, p. 15).

All of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna's seven children were presented with identical triptych icons, or skladen, immediately after their births, commissioned from the Ovchinnikov firm, with their respective name saints depicted on the central panel, those of their parents on the wings.  With each birth, the Court iconographer rushed to produce the central panel once the gender was ascertained and name decided upon, with a deadline to finish in time for the Christening which, by Russian Orthodox church law, was held within forty days.  For Prince Andrei’s Christening, his uncle the Emperor stood as godfather. 

The icon was among the relatively few possessions with which Prince Andrei managed to escape Russia during the Revolution.  Initially placed under house arrest with his family at Ai-Todor, their estate in the Crimea, the prince, with his new wife, Elisabeta Ruffo di Saint Antimo, and his father, managed to reach France in 1918.  Their mission was to canvas support for the White Army in Europe.  The rest of the family, including the Dowager Empress and Grand Duchess Xenia, were rescued the following year by the British warship HMS Marlborough, sent by King George V.

Prince Andrei spent the latter half of his life as a busy country gentleman at Provender in Kent, the ancestral home of his second wife, Nadine MacDougall, whom he married in 1942 following the death of his Elisabeta in an air raid at Hampton Court.  (Officiating at the Russian Orthodox service was Father Nicholas, who, as Sydney Gibbes, had served as tutor to the Emperor’s children, Prince Andrei’s cousins.) 

The icon remained a prized possession for the remainder of his life, kept in his ‘special drawer’ only to be taken out at Easter, a tangible link to a past which was sometimes distressing to recollect.  His daughter Princess Olga continues, ‘He accompanied the Empress Alexandra and her four daughters, his cousins, on their tour of the churches of Novgorod and remembered with pleasure the peasants’ delight at the fun and spontaneity of the young Grand Duchesses as they travelled through the countryside on the Imperial train.  It was the last time he would see them.  Within two years the Revolution had broken out; in later life he rarely spoke of them as he found the memories too painful’ (op. cit., p. 15-16). 

While other Imperial birth icons have appeared on the market, these are invariably of an official nature, presented by loyal subjects, bureacrats or municipalities.  Typical of these is the Ovchinnikov triptych given by the people of Tsarskoe Selo to the Emperor and Empress following the birth of their first daughter, Grand Duchess Olga, in 1895, which sold, Sotheby's New York, 16 April 2008, lot 492.  The present lot is marked out by its very personal connections to the Romanov Family, a gift from parents to child, which remained a central part of family life and worship for over a century.