A Drop of History 112

Fabergé eggs
The stunning creations of the world’s greatest jeweller

In September 1918, an old man fled from Russia, where the communist revolution had just prevailed, disguised as a diplomatic messenger. Disillusioned, he died two years later in Lausanne. His name was Peter Carl Fabergé, and he is considered the greatest jeweller mankind ever produced.

The communist regime closed his shops and workshops, unable to tolerate the work of the czars’ official jeweller, whose creations were cherished by kings, princes and moguls the world over. He had a large boutique in Moscow and later added more, in Odessa, Kiev and London, where only royalty and business multimillionaires had access. Fabergé’s creations were masterpieces, using all sorts of metals and gems. Several thousand amazing artifacts came out of his workshops, and all of them were unique. None of them was ever made twice.

Beyond conventional jewellery, Fabergé’s imagination and skill were constantly at work, devising all sorts of objects. Miniatures, statues, goblets, ashtrays, umbrella handles, figurines, timepieces, flowers. Among his endless creations, some particularly famous items were the enamel, gold and diamond music box he created for Prince Felix Yussupov’s wedding anniversary; a brooch for ballerina Tamara Karsavina, made of the biggest single amethyst ever found; a basket of pearl flowers with golden stamens for Czarina Alexandra; a silver cauldron standing on four eagle claws for Emperor Menelek II of Ethiopia; a goblet of black glass decorated with pink enamel, gold and diamonds for King Rama VI of Siam. There was also a famous 15-centimetre green jade Buddha with ruby eyes, pink diamond tongue and a sash of white enamel, and finally, a 7.5-centimetre miniature carriage with enamel seats, gold detailing, crystal windows and pearl interior.

Still, Fabergé’s greatest masterpieces were the famous Easter eggs of the czars. In 1881, Fabergé gave Czar Alexander III a gold and white enamel egg. When the czar opened it, he found inside a golden yolk, which also opened to reveal a chick wearing a crown with a ruby egg on it. The czar was so delighted that he commissioned Fabergé to create an egg every Easter, a custom that his descendants continued. Fabergé, over half a century, created a total of fifty-seven stunning eggs, each one of which became famous. Some of the best known were:

- The 1897 egg: Made of green gold, emblazoned with the twin Russian eagles made out of black enamel and pink diamonds. It contained a miniature of the imperial carriage with crisscrossing gold bands and the coachman’s seat made of orange enamel.

- The 1900 egg: Decorated with a map of Russia and a platinum Trans-Siberian railway miniature with a huge ruby on the engine, two golden passenger cars, a silver smokers car and a crystal chapel car.

- The 1906 egg: Made of matte purple enamel, decorated with crisscrossing diamond bands and a golden swan in an aquamarine pond. Around the pond there were aquatic plants in four shades of gold and at the push of a button the swan would stand on its golden feet and hop to sit on a golden tree.

The creation of those eggs stopped in 1917, with the victory of the Bolsheviks, and nobody knows exactly how many have survived. There are only three in the Kremlin Museum, four in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and three more are owned by a London jeweller. Those are on public display, but there are more in private collections. An American cooper, Armand Hammer, went to Russia with a mobile clinic in 1921, ostensibly to help the struggle against typhus. The revolutionary government welcomed him with open arms, believing he was motivated by internationalist solidarity, and facilitated his itinerary through Russia. When Hammer returned to the US, he had in his luggage thirteen such Easter eggs, bought for a piece of bread from ragged, illiterate revolutionaries who had pocketed them when they stormed the imperial palace. Hammer sold them to private collections in the US, in exchange for staggering sums, but at least the eggs were saved.

The rest of the fifty-seven eggs were lost, probably cut to pieces and sold as gold and gems to fund the living of those who had seized them. Fabergé left Russia ruined and died destitute and miserable. Sir Sacheverell Sitwell said of him: “It is unlikely that the world will ever again see a jeweller like Carl Fabergé. The wonders of imagination he created will never be made again.”

In the end, that is the fate of all revolutions. They destroy the symbols and baubles of the old regime, as products of corruption and ignorance, but soon afterwards they replace them with their own symbols and baubles, which usually are sillier and cheaper than the ones they levelled…

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 102

Eunuchs through history
Ectomies, thlipsies, spandones

Through the course of history, irrespective of time and place, men controlled the structures of power almost exclusively. Women mostly remained in their quarters and in the margins of social and political life. Still, for several centuries, there was a third category of people who played a very significant role in public affairs in all sorts of human societies: eunuchs. One can say that the phenomenon started moving towards extinction only in the 20th century.

Thousands of eunuchs served as priests in Ishtar’s temples in Babylon. Thousands of eunuchs served the Chinese emperors in the Forbidden City. According to Strabo, the temple of Artemis in Ephesus swarmed with eunuch priests, called megavyzoi. The castration of boys destined to become temple priests or palace servants was usually decided by their parents themselves. In Rome, castration was so common, in order to advance eunuchs in higher public offices, that both Hadrian and Constantine the Great created laws against the practice. After all, on top of everything else, wholesale castrations deprived the Roman legions of recruits.

According to Roman law, there were three categories of eunuchs: ectomies, whose genitals had been cut off, thlipsies, whose genitals had been crushed, and spandones, whose genitals were not functional due to illness or another cause. A Roman matron who discovered that her husband was a eunuch was entitled to immediate divorce. In the two first cases, the married eunuch could even be punished himself, while spandones were not, because there was the possibility of them not being aware of their condition before the marriage.

Eunuchs in Byzantium were protagonists of intrigue. Since no mutilated man could ascend the throne, Byzantine emperors preferred to be surrounded by eunuchs than ordinary men. The emperor’s chamberlain was a eunuch, and the rivalry between eunuchs and barbati (as able-bodied men were called) over the remaining positions in the palace was proverbial. The praepositus and the cubicularii (the emperor’s personal servants), the coenonites (servants who watched over the emperor in his sleep), the protovestiarius (responsible for the emperor’s wardrobe), the castresius (responsible for the emperor’s meals), the papias (palace janitor), the magnauras (responsible for the outfitting and lighting of the palace), all of which were positions of great power at the time, were all eunuchs. Arcadius I’s prime minister Epitropus, Theodosius II’s prime minister Chrysaphius, Constas II’s prime minister Eusebius, Irene’s prime ministers Stauracius and Aetius were all eunuchs. So were Justinian’s great General Narses and Patriarch Stephen II.

When Constantinople fell to the Turks, eunuchs started to be imported, since the Qur’an forbade the mutilation of Muslims. Slave traders would abduct boys from Africa or Asia, castrate them with primitive methods, using sharp stones or rusty blades, and sell those who survived at the Istanbul slave market. Caucasian castrated boys, who remained delicate and smooth-skinned and were used as catamites by the Turks, went for astronomical prices. The brutish, hulking black African eunuchs, who were used as harem guards, were almost equally expensive.

An appalling habit that persisted into the 1800s in Europe led to the castration of boys gifted with fine voices, in order to keep their timbre in adulthood, singing in church choirs for the delight of popes and cardinals. Many of those boys went on to stellar careers in the theatre or the opera. The most famous opera singer in 18th-century Italy was the castrato Farinelli. He was idolised by the Italians, rich beyond belief, and incredibly arrogant. He had built himself a huge palazzo and set an inscription over the door that read, “I achieved as much as Apollonio”, a reference to another famous Italian opera singer, before his own time – then some malicious fellow Italian had added beneath: “He with, you without.”

This horror is no longer practised, but the castration of people’s minds and souls continues apace, with little hope for extinction…

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 95

Aphrodite of Milos
The twenty-five tragic days that sent her abroad

Only cruel fate could have played such a nasty game on Greece, making George Kentrotas or Botonis decide to dig up his field on 8 April 1820. If he had done it eleven months later, the fate of his finding would have been totally different. It would have stayed in the motherland instead of adorning the Louvre in Paris. But George Kentrotas, a poor farmer on the island of Milos and father of a large family, needed stone to build a wall. So he started digging in his field, when his pickaxe struck the roof of an underground dome. Amazed, he scrambled down the hole he had opened and found himself in a room, on whose floor lay an exquisite white marble statue.

The statue depicted a beautiful bare-breasted woman; both arms were broken off, but all other details were in excellent repair. The statue itself was broken in two; the bottom half was found close by a few days later and was stuck in place in France. Kentrotas was illiterate, so he knew neither the value of the statue nor what to do with it. He discussed his finding with other people in the village, and that was when the adventure started.

The French warship Estafette was temporarily ported in Adamas, due to bad weather. One of her officers, Olivier Voutier, heard about the discovery and went immediately to see it. According to some accounts, he was actually there when the statue was found. He was the first to read the inscription on the plinth – Aphrodite. Voutier was also the first to make a drawing of the statue.

A few days later, a second French warship, the Chevrette, arrived. Ensign Jules Dumont d’Urville saw Aphrodite, discussed with Voutier, and, realising her value, both left immediately for Istanbul, in order to inform the French ambassador in the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

In the meantime, the French consul on Milos tried to buy the statue to secure the deal. But the secret had leaked and just about everyone was trying to buy the wonderful statue. Unknown buyers from Athens sent a priest named Vergis to take it to Piraeus. A monk from Milos, who had been accused of irregular behaviour and had been called to Istanbul to defend himself, thought to take it with him and give it to the fleet translator in order to gain his favour. Said fleet translator was one of the highest-ranking military officers in the empire, Prince Nicholas Mourouzis, the son of the voivod of Moldavia. The monk intended to give him Aphrodite, so that he could send her to his father in Moldavia (modern Romania).

The French ambassador in Istanbul, on learning of the statue’s existence, started to negotiate buying it legally. He obtained a bull from the Divan to show to the Turks, and a reference letter from Patriarch Gregory V for the Greeks. Then he sent off his representative, who arrived in Milos on the Estafette on 20 May 1820. He found the statue clumsily packed on the deck of a sailboat from Spetses under Turkish flag, ready to sail for Istanbul and thence to Moldavia. Poor Kentrotas had found himself in the eye of the storm and had been forced to hand over the statue to the Turks with a promise of future pay.

The French started showing documents, negotiating, threatening and bribing, anything to acquire the statue. Nobody knows exactly how Aphrodite ended in French hands. Some say the Turks themselves handed her over, others claim that the French crew assailed the boat from Spetses and carried her off. Kentrotas, anyway, received a ridiculous sum, since the entire operation cost the French one thousand francs. A few months later, the Estafette brought Aphrodite to Marseille.

Poor, lovely Aphrodite of Milos, Grecian lady of the white breasts and the wistful smile, child of an apprentice to Scopas, who was himself an apprentice of Phidias, you spent twenty-two centuries hidden in sacred ground and were claimed by Turks and French… everyone but the wretched Greeks. Why didn’t you wait just a few more days before rising to the light? You were unveiled in the Champs-Élysées on 1 March 1821, as a gift from the French ambassador in Istanbul, the marquis de Rivière, to King Louis XVII. Precisely twenty-five days later, on 25 March 1821, a revolution broke out, one that would have kept you in your motherland forever.

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved