Artfully decorated eggs, most famously the Fabergé eggs by Peter Carl Fabergé, have always been part of art. The egg is a symbol of resurrection. It's perfect spheroid form invited artists of all periods to add rich decoration, painting or other forms of changing the natural form and product into an artefact.

On April 22, 1907, Tsar Nicholas II presented this egg to his wife, Alexandra Fedorovna, to commemorate the birth of the tsarevich, Alexei Nicholaievich, three years earlier. Because of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, no Imperial Easter eggs had been produced for two years. The egg contained as a surprise a diamond necklace and an ivory miniature portrait of the tsarevich framed in diamonds (now lost). Fabergé's invoice, dated April 21, 1907, listed the egg at 8,300 rubles.

Location: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore