History and Culture: The exhibition "Empress Maria Feodorovna - Artist and Collector" was opened in Petrozavodsk

In the Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Karelia (Petrozavodsk) an exhibition "Empress Maria Feodorovna - Artist and Collector" was opened. It is dedicated to the creativity and gathering activity of the wife of Emperor Alexander III and the mother of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II Maria Feodorovna Romanova. 

The first lessons of graphic diploma, the Danish Princess Dagmar, later the Russian Empress Maria Feodorovna, received in her childhood from her mother Queen Louise. In Russia, continuing the long tradition of palace family education, Maria Feodorovna took lessons from the remarkable Russian seascape painter, outstanding master of plein air painting Andrei Bogolyubov. 

Possession of pictorial skill helped the reigning people to improve their artistic taste, instilled in them an interest in the problems of artistic enlightenment. It was Maria Feodorovna and Emperor Alexander III who owned the idea of creating in St. Petersburg a national museum of Russian art based on numerous personal collections of the imperial family. These collections further expanded the collection of the future State Russian Museum, opened to visitors under Nicholas II in 1898.

The exhibition gives an opportunity to residents and guests of Petrozavodsk to see three works of Empress Maria Feodorovna and items from her collection of paintings from the second half of the XIX century. The exhibition is complemented by a unique collection of Western European ceramics. The most interesting part of it is faience and majolica of the XVI-XVII centuries. These exhibits are a historical rarity. At the exhibition the spectator has an amazing opportunity to see Renaissance and Baroque objects, familiar to Dutch and German still-lives.