|
 |
St. Petersburg Museums
- The Hermitage
| Name: |
The Hermitage |
| |
 |
| Address: |
Dvortsovaya naberezhnaya (metro
station: Nevsky prospekt) |
| Phone: |
+7 (812) 219-4551, +7 (812)
311-3465 |
| Open: |
Open: 10.30am - 6pm
Closed: Mondays |
| Description: |
The Hermitage is one of the
world's greatest art museums and Russia's largest art repository,
totalling about three million exhibits.
The date of its foundation is considered to be 1764, when
the first consignment of 225 paintings, acquired by Catherine
II in Berlin, arrived in St. Petersburg. In 1863 the Hermitage
became a public museum.
At present the museum occupies five buildings: the Winter
Palace (1754-62, architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli),
the Small Hermitage (1764-77, architect Yuri Velten and Jean-Baptiste
Vallin de la Mothe), the Old Hermitage (1770-87, architect
Yuri Velten), the New Hermitage (1842-51, architect Leo von
Klenze) and the Hermitage Theatre (1783-87, architect Giacomo
Quarenghi). There is also an exhibition at the Menshikov Palace,
a branch of the Hermitage.
The purchase of art collections for the imperial family continued
until 1917. The first of these was the collection of Count
Heinrich Briihl, bought in 1769 from his heirs in Dresden.
It consisted of 600 canvases, including such masterpieces
as Portrait of an Old Man in Red by Rembrandt, Perseus and
Andromeda by Rubens and the Deposition by Poussin. At a later
date, the famous collections of Sir Robert Walpole and Count
Baudouin were acquired from London and Paris.
Besides paintings, the museum also acquired collections of
prints and drawings, classical antiquities, objects of Western
European applied art, weapons, coins, medals and books (Voltaire's
library). In the 19th century the Hermitage began to receive
archaeological artefacts which, among other things, formed
the nucleus of the celebrated collection of Scythian gold.
After the 1917 revolution, numerous works of art found their
way into the museum, following the nationalization of private
collections. Especially important additions came from the
Petrograd mansions of the nobility: the Yusupovs, Sheremetevs,
Shuvalovs and Stroganovs, to name but four. In Soviet times
the museum's reserves were considerably augmented with materials
brought back from scientific expeditions.
In order to take in all the collections currently on show
you would have to cover a distance of 22 km. It would take
you almost 15 years to embrace all the treasures, spending
8 hours a day in the museum and for a minute examining each
exhibit.
In the Hermitage you can explore the art of Ancient Egypt,
Mesopotamia, Classical Greece and its colonies in the northern
Black Sea coast area. You can also examine the culture of
the Etruscans and the primitive tribes of Siberia, as well
as seeing Egyptian mummies, antiqoe pottery, Tanagra statuary,
Roman sculptural portraits, Scythian and Sarmatian artefacts,
the unique complex of the Pazyryk burial mound of the 6th-4th
centuries B.C., and many other things.
The Western European Department covers the art of Italy (8th-18th
centuries), Spain (15th-19th centuries), the Netherlands,
Holland and Flanders (15th-17th centuries), France (15th-20th
centuries), Germany (15th-18th centuries) and England (17th-19th
centuries). Its displays include masterpieces by great painters
such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese,
Caravaggio, Tiepolo, El Greco, Jose Ribera, Francisco Zurbaran,
Diego Velazquez, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Francisco Goya,
Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van
Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Frans Snyders, Frans Hals, Rembrandt,
Hans Holbein the Younger, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Joshua
Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorraine,
Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Eugene Delacroix,
Camille Corot, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne,
Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin,
Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Andre Derain, Maurice Vlaminck,
Pierre Bonnard, Albert Marquet and Fernand Leger. Also to
be found here are exquisite sculptures by Michelangelo, Antonio
Canova, Etienne-Maurice Falconet, Jean-Antoine Houdon and
Auguste Rodin, and displays of Western European arms (15th-17th
centuries), Italian majolicas, tapestries, Limoges enamels
and Sevres porcelains.
The Department of the History of Russian Culture contains
a great variety of masterials, dating right back to Ancient
Rus'. Particularly noteworthy are exhibits from the Petrine
era and the mid-to late 18th century. An exhibition entitled
"The Artistic Decoration of the 19th century Russian
Interior" is permanently on view.
The interiors of the Winter Palace are among the masterpieces
of Russian monumental and applied arts. They were decorated
according to designs by such illustrious artists as Rastrelli,
Vasily Stasov, Carlo Rossi, Auguste Montferrand, Alexander
Briullov and Andrei Stakenschneider. Of particular interest
are the Jordan Staircase, the Field-Marshal's Hall, the Small
Throne Room, the Gallery of 1812 (a monument to Russia's military
victories), the Hall of St. George (The Great Throne Room),
the Malachite Hall and the Hermitage Theatre.
The exhibition "The Winter Palace of Peter I", which
opened in 1992, is devoted to the founder of the city. It
is situated on the site of the former palace of the first
Russian emperor. The foundation and the walls of the palace
were uncovered during a restoration of the Hermitage Theatre. |
|
|
|
|
