How the details of this bust revealed its subject—a forgotten world leader

"It’s a great mystery: who he is, who made it."

"It was a great mystery: who he is, who made it."

Curator Wolfram Koeppe on a sculpture of Alexander Danilovich Menshikov by an unknown artist.

Explore this object:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/208538

Throughout 2013, The Met invited curators from across the Museum to each talk about one artwork that changed the way they see the world.

Photography by Mark Morosse

Rights & Permissions
No 2: The Old Castle (II vechio castello) and No 4: Bydlo (A Polish Ox-cart)
from Pictures from an Exhibition by Musorgsky played by Nikolai Demidenko
courtesy of Hyperion Records Ltd, London (www.hyperion-records.co.uk)

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Contributors

Wolfram Koeppe
Marina Kellen French Senior Curator, Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Female figure with long, dark hair and blue skin stands assertively, eyes wide and tongue out. Her multiple arms hold a sword and severed head, and she wears a necklace and belt of body parts.
Wrathful images of the divine in South Asia are meant to protect and nurture, not to be feared.
Vaishnavi Patil
March 9
Pop art portrait of a woman with bright orange hair, turquoise skin, pink lips, and lavender eyeshadow on a pink background.
How do works in The Met collection trace the shifting associations of blonde glamour in Western art?
Lynda Nead
February 2
A small wooden carved box featuring figures and a tree in relief.
The author of After Sappho offers a queer feminist reading of Eve and the serpent, reimagining sin as likeness, desire, and bodies transcending gender and species.
Selby Wynn Schwartz
January 9
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Alexander Danilovich Menshikov (1673–1729), Unknown Artist, Swiss, Austrian, or German, active Russia ca. 1703–4, Red pine (pinus sylvestris), with wrought-iron clips, Russian, St. Petersburg
Unknown
probably shortly before 1704