Among the world’s most outstanding art museums one of the first places is taken by the State Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. It is the greatest museum of the Russia: its vast and miscellaneous collections take nowadays a block of four buildings; its rooms, if stretched in one line, would measure many miles in total length, while they cover an area of 94 240 square metres. Over 300 rooms are open to the public and contain a rich selection from the Museum’s collections numbering over 2300000 items. The earliest exhibits date from 500000—300000 Ð’. C, the latest — from our days.
All the Museum exhibits are distributed among seven departments which are subdivided into forty permanent exhibitions. Continue Reading »
THE STATE HERMITAGE
THE MAKING OF THE COLLECTION
Although visited now by thousands of people the Museum traditionally retains the old name — “The Hermitage” — attached to it in the 1760′s, which means “a hermit’s dwelling”, or “a solitary place”. This name originated in the fact that the Hermitage was founded as a palace museum accessible only to the nearest of the near to the court.
Some art treasures, of which but a small part was incorporated with the later museum collections, were purchased in different countries by Peter 1. These were, e. g., antique statues, marine landscapes, some pieces of Chinese applied art, collection of Siberian gold buckles from the 4th to the 1st centuries Ð’. C. Continue Reading »
BUILDINGS AND ROOMS OF THE MUSEUM. PART I
At the present moment the exhibitions of the Hermitage occupy four buildings, the fifth — t h e Hermitage Theatre — being used now as a Lecture Theatre of the Museum. All the five buildings, though erected at different times and for different purposes, are linked together by roofed passages, thus forming a single unit.
Being adjacent to the Winter Palace the Hermitage buildings, though intended to house the museum collections, served for a long time as an extention of the palace, Continue Reading »
BUILDINGS AND ROOMS OF THE MUSEUM. PART II
On account of the considerable increase of the museum collections jfter the Revolution, the Winter Palace was added to the Hermitage, the State rooms and living rooms being fitted to the exhibition purposes, svhereas the architectural style and decorations were carefully preserved.
Among the most notable rooms of the Winter Palace is the imposing suite of the State rooms which begins with the Small Throne Room, or Peter Room, so called in the 19th century in memory of Peter 1 (Hermitage, 1st floor, room 194). It was designed b y O. Monferrand (1786—1858) in 1833 and reconstructed by V. Stasov after the fire of 1837. The walls are upholstered with fine Lyon velvet embroidered with silver thread, which was commissioned specially for this room. Raised gilded plaster work and ceiling-paintings also deserve special mention. Continue Reading »
THE DEPARTMENT OF THE HISTORY OF RUSSIAN CULTURE
The Department of Russian Culture is one of those organized in the Museum after the October Revolution of 1917. It was created in 1941 and takes now 40 rooms of the Winter Palace. Special emphasis deserves the fact that it is the history of Russian culture and not the development of fine arts in Russia that the Hermitage is intended to demonstrate, the Russian School being represented in about 100 museums and art galleries of the country, of which the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg are the noteworthiest. Continue Reading »
RUSSIAN CULTURE OF THE MIDDLE – AND THE SECOND HALF OF THE 18th CENTURY
Bronze portrait bust of Peter I
Adjoining the Gallery of Peter I are rooms housing the material relating to the history of RUSSIAN CULTURE OF THE MIDDLE-AND THE SECOND HALF OF THE 18th CENTURY (Hermitage, 1st floor, rooms 187—173, 190). Here are paintings, drawings, and water-colours representing outstanding architectural monuments and giving evidence of the high level of the Russian architecture of the period in question; genuine works of art illustrative of Russian portrait and landscape painting; books and manuscripts of great value relating to the complicated social history of the eighteenth-century Continue Reading »
RUSSIAN CULTURE OF THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE 19th CENTURY
RUSSIAN CULTURE OF THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE 19th CENTURY. Hermitage, rooms 172- 167) is represented by the material of the same kind as the above mentioned. The most notable historic events of the epoch — the Patriotic War of 1812 and the Decembrists’ uprising of 1825 -are illustrated by a number of historical documents as well as by contemporary paintings, prints and drawings, among the noteworthiest being those representing the leaders of the Decembrists’ uprising. Continue Reading »
THE DEPARTMENT OF THE HISTORY OF PRIMITIVE CULTURE
Hermitage, ground floor, rooms 11-33 also belongs to those organized in the Museum after 317. It contains an almost limitless assortment of objects illustrative of jlture and art relating to the period of the primitive communal system n the territory of the USSR, the collections being formed of archaeoloical finds gathered by several generations of Russian archaeologists. Continue Reading »
ART OF THE PEOPLES OF THE EAST
Oriental Department of the Hermitage comprises nowadays one of the world’s greatest collections representing culture and art of the peoples of the East. It was created in 1920, being formed of some 7 000 separate items distributed among different sections of the Museum, and has not ceased to grow since that time, numbering nowadays 136 000 exhibits. Of outstanding importance are its collections of Byzantine art and Sassanian silver, the Greco-Bactrian collection, ancient Chinese textiles, cultural memorials from Urartu, Dagestan bronzes and reliefs, Coptic textiles. The collection Continue Reading »
The Department of the History of Culture and Art of foreign Oriental countries
The Department of the History of Culture and Art of foreign Oriental countries starts with the exhibition devoted to EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES which covers the period from the 4th millennium Ð’. C. to the 4th century A. D. (ground floor, rooms 80 — 91). It is not representative of monumental sculpture though there are some good examples of it, the greater part of the collection being composed of objects used for funerary purposes and exhibiting the skill shown by Egyptian craftsmen in minor arts. Of outstanding interest is the collection of papyri, of which the one named “The Tale of a Shipwrecked” (20th century Ð’. C.) is of world renown. Hermitage, room â„– 81). Among the most notable exhibits special mention deserve the black granite statue of Amenemhat III (19th century Ð’. C, Middle Kingdom); the figure of the goddess Sekhmet, also in black granite (15th century Ð’. C, New Kingdom); a wooden statuette of a man (15th century Ð’ С ) two granite sarcophagi of queen Nakht-Bastot-ru and her son general Ahmose (6th century Ð’. C ) ; a bronze statuette of Takharka, the’last ruler of the Ethiopian dynasty in Egypt (7th century Ð’. C ) ; and some Fajum portraits. The collection is exceptionally rich in textiles of the Coptic Egypt (4th — 5th centuries A. D.). Hermitage, room 90).
Head of a woman. Palmyra. Late 2nd century A. D. Continue Reading »