Catherine the Great Egg
Cat. no. 175
Workmaster: Henrik Wigström (1862-1923)
Miniatures by Vasilii Zuiev (born 1870)
St. Petersburg, 1914
Gold, enamel, diamonds, pearls
Hillwood Museum, Washington, D.C.

This egg demonstrates the debt Fabergé's designers owed to 18th-century French art and decoration. Painted to imitate carved cameos, the miniatures on the shell depict allegorical scenes of the arts and sciences inspired by François Boucher. In 1914, Maria Feodorovna, the dowager empress, was the recipient of this imposing piece, one of the grandest of the imperial Easter eggs, apparently presented to her by Fabergé himself. It then contained a mechanical sedan chair carried by two servants, with a tiny image of Catherine the Great seated inside. By the time Armand Hammer acquired the egg in 1930 from the Antikvariat (the Soviet agency that supervised Russian art sales), the surprise had been lost. Marjorie Merriweather Post received the egg from her daughter Eleanor in 1931.

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