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.
However, traditionally the date оf the foundation of the Hermitage is considered 1764 when a collection of 225 pictures was acquired by Catherine 11 from the Prussian merchant Gotzkovsky.
A feature characteristic of the eighteenth-century acquisitions was the purchase of large groups of paintings, sometimes of complete galleries, bought en b 1 oc at the sales in West Europe. Such was Count Bruhl’s collection acquired in Dresden in 1769; the gallery of Crozat bought in Paris in 1772; the gallery of Lord Walpole acquired in London in 1779. These were the noteworthiest acquisitions made in the 18th century which, together with numerous purchases of individual pictures, supplied the Museum with most outstanding canvases of European School including those by Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck and other eminent artists, and made the Hermitage, already at that time, rank among the finest galleries of Europe. Commissions by the Russian Court from European painters were also a source enriching the Picture Gallery. By 1785 the Museum numbered already 2 658 paintings. Prints and drawings, cameos, coins and medals were represented at the Hermitage too.
The purchase of complete collections as well as of separate works of art continued throughout the 19th century, however not on so large a scale as in the previous period. Among the noteworthiest acquisitions of the 19th century were: the Empress Josephine’s Malmaison Gallery bought in 1814; the English banker Coesvelt collection consisting mainly of Spanish paintings, purchased in Amsterdam the same year; as well as paintings from the Barbarigo Palace in Venice which gave the Museum its best Titians.
As to the purchase of separate works of art, the acquisition in 1866 of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Madonna Litta” from the Duke of Litta collection and of Raphael’s “Virgin and Child” from the Gonestabile family (the “Madonna Gonestabile”) in 1870, deserve special mention.
Excavations started in the South of Russia in the first half of the 19th century provided an opportunity of creating a new section at the Museum, representative of Greek and Roman antiquities; it comprised also the collection of sculpture gathered in the 18th century and housed till the middle of the 19th century in the Tavrichesky Palace.
In 1885 the Hermitage received an important collection of objects of applied art of the 12th — 16th centuries, gathered by Basilevsky, which, together with the Armory transferred from Tsarskoye Selo, notably enriched the Museum with a new type of material.
The first decade of the 20th century was made illustrious by the acquisition from the eminent Russian scientist Semenov-Tienshansky of his magnificent collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings which included 730 canvases. The other most important acquisition was Leonardo da Vinci’s “Madonna and Child” (the “Madonna Benois”) purchased in 1913 from the architect L. Benois family.
The Great October Socialist Revolution created extremely favourable conditions for the further growth of the Museum collections and their systematic study. Since October 1917, due to the care taken by the Soviet Government for the preservation of all the art treasures in Russia, the Museum collections were enriched by a great number of first class works of art. These were: best pictures chosen by the Hermitage authorities from the nationalized private collections such as those formerly belonging to the Jusupovs, the Shuvalovs, the Stroganovs; paintings transferred from the imperial palaces; art treasures exchanged with other museums within the Country. Planned distribution of art treasures among the museums carried out by the State, enabled the Hermitage not only to fill up many gaps and deficiencies by adding to its picture gallery Italian paintings of the 13th — 15th centuries, pictures of the Netherlandish School, as well as of the French School of the 19th and 20th centuries (originally gathered in the Moscow private collections of Shchukin and Morosov), but to form a Museum free from private taste and opinion, and made it possible to arrange the collections systematically.
Nowadays the chief ways of enriching the Hermitage collections are exchanges with the museums of the Russia, purchases made by the State Purchase Commission, and a number of archaeological excavations carried out all over the Country.
All this provided an opportunity of forming new departments in the Museum devoted to the history of culture and art of the Primitive Society, to the history of culture and art of the Soviet East and foreign countries of the East, to the history of Russian culture.
The immense increase of the collections resulted in the necessity of larger exhibition space. That is why the Winter Palace was added to the Hermitage, the name “The State Hermitage Museum” being applied now to the whole great Museum thus constructed.