Pulls of the lid, sides and base of this box are pasted in an album in the Hanau archive dated 1806.

The plaque is a copy of a painting executed in 1797 by Andrey Nikiforovich Voronikhin (1759 - 1814), depicting the Stroganov dacha then on the outskirts of St Petersburg. The artistic talents of the youthful Voronikhin, born a serf of the Stroganov family, were quickly identified and he was sent to study painting in Moscow by Count Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov (1733–1811). Liberated in 1785, Voronikhin then studied architecture in France and Switzerland. In 1793 he was responsible for completing the interiors of the Stroganov palace in St Petersburg; between 1795 and 1797 he reworked the interior of the familys dacha, which had been begun by Antonio Rinaldi (c.1710–1794). This plaque shows the dacha after the completion of the project. Voronikhins most important commission was the Kasan Cathedral in St Petersburg, constructed between 1801 and 1811, one of the great monuments of the Russian Empire style.

It is most probable that this snuffbox was a special commission by Count Stroganov, a leading patron of the arts in Russia at the time. It celebrates not only the completion of his dacha retreat Mon Repos– identified by the inscription on the side – but also Voronikhin, whose career Stroganov had been so instrumental in nurturing.

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