History and Culture: Exhibition "Orthodox Church Vestments of the Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Centuries in the Hermitage Collection" to open in Saint-Petersburg

The exhibition "Orthodox Church Vestments of the Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Centuries in the Hermitage Collection" will be opened on May 1, 2021, in the Small Church of the Winter Palace (State Hermitage Museum, Saint-Petersburg).

Church vestments make a separate and distinct group of items in the State Hermitage Museum’s collections. Like many other cultural traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church, they hearken back to the Byzantine Empire.

Unlike secular clothes, ecclesiastical vestments have been immune to fashion trends. For centuries, they have remained almost unaltered, thus incarnating the sanctity of religious foundations. Nevertheless, some changes may be traced in their finishing, choice of fabrics and type of embroidery. It can be linked to the styles prevailing in architecture and applied arts.

The State Hermitage collection of church vestments includes some 300 items spanning a period from the late seventeenth to early twentieth centuries and showcasing various stages, changes in style and decoration techniques.