An imperial presentation jewelled gold and champlevé enamel portrait miniature locket, probably Russia, late 18th century

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Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 EUR

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Lot Details

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Description

the cover with an enamelled laurel wreath border in green champlevé, the centre chased with a gold sunburst motif over which is applied a diamond-set cypher for Empress Catherine II, the portrait miniature inside painted after Vigilius Ericksen's Portrait of Catherine the Great Wearing a Kokoshnik, the enamel miniature within a blue champlevé border, indistinctly signed above the Empress's right shoulder

height 4.2cm; 1 5/8 in.

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The portrait miniature is based Danish painter Vigilius Ericksen's (1769-1772) Portrait of Catherine the Great Wearing a Kokoshnik. In addition to being the royal portraitist to Christian VI, King of Denmark, Ericksen travelled extensively to St Petersburg between the years 1757 and 1772, where he became the imperial court painter and completed several portraits of Empress Catherine II and other members of the Imperial Russian nobility.

Several copies of Eriksen's original painting were made, including a 1773 engraving by the English William Dickinson (1746-1823) who recorded the original as being in the collection of the Honourable Baron Dimsdale. Thomas Robert Dimsdale, a physician from Hertfordshire, had built a reputation at the time for the work he had contributed to the field of smallpox inoculation. Catherine the Great was a great proponent of the Enlightenment and welcomed scientific developments during her reign. Having heard word of Dimsdale's work, the Empress was eager to invite him to Russia to treat her and her son Paul I with variolation (the early practice of immunisation against smallpox). She was so greatly satisfied with the treatment, she bestowed upon him a Barony of the Russian Empire.

A century later, a mid-19th-century anonymous copy after Ericksen's painting entered the Portrait Gallery of the Romanov Dynasty in the Winter Palace, before being moved to the State Hermitage in 1918 (inv. ГЭ-7276).

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