Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items (thenumismatic collection accounting for about one-third of them).[7] The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings alongPalace Embankment, including theWinter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, theMenshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of theGeneral Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has beenMikhail Piotrovsky.[8]
Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, andHermitage Theatre—are all open to the public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace, accessible from the Courtyard.
Ahermitage is the dwelling of ahermit or recluse, who lives in isolation from society. Originally, the "Hermitage" of theWinter Palace referred the Palace's private apartments -- so-named because, as the personal residence of the Tsars, they were intended to be a refuge from the obligations of courtly life; where the Russian sovereigns could retreat to with their intimate circle of personal friends. As such, what is today the Hermitage Museum was initially the personal collection of the Russian Imperial family.
The Hermitage of the Winter Palace was founded byCatherine the Great, who used these apartments to host privatesalons. She also founded the Museum's collection in 1764, with a collection of 225 paintings from Western Europe.
Today, the Hermitage Museum includes a complex of six buildings, and has extended beyond the original palace apartments (today called the "Small Hermitage").[9]
Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from the Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the "Hermitage Theatre", and the "Winter Palace", the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to theGeneral Staff Building on thePalace Square facing the Winter Palace, and theMenshikov Palace.[10]
The Hermitage Museum complex. From left to right: Hermitage Theatre – Old Hermitage – Small Hermitage – Winter Palace (the "New Hermitage" is situated behind the Old Hermitage)
Since 1940, theEgyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and including the formerCastiglione Collection, has occupied a large hall on the ground floor in the eastern part of the Winter Palace.[11]
The collection of classical antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage buildings. The interiors of the ground floor were designed by the German architectLeo von Klenze in theGreek Revival style in the early 1850s, usingpainted polishedstucco and columns of naturalmarble andgranite.
The Room of the Great Vase in the western wing features the 2.57 m (8.4 ft) high Kolyvan Vase, weighing 19 t (42,000 lb), made ofjasper in 1843 and installed before the walls were erected. While the western wing was designed for exhibitions, the rooms on the ground floor in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage, now also hosting exhibitions, were originally intended forlibraries.
The collection of classical antiquities features Greek artifacts from the third millennium – fifth century BC,ancient Greek pottery, items from the Greek cities of the NorthPonticGreek colonies,Hellenistic sculpture and jewellery, includingengraved gems andcameos, such as the famous Gonzaga Cameo, Italic art from the 9th to second century BC, Roman marble and bronze sculpture and applied art from the first century BC to fourth century AD, including copies of Classical and Hellenistic Greek sculptures. One of the highlights of the collection is theTauride Venus, which, according to latest research, is an original Hellenistic Greek sculpture rather than a Roman copy as it was thought before.[12] There are, however, only a few pieces of authenticClassical Greek sculpture and sepulchral monuments.
On the ground floor in the western wing of the Winter Palace the collections ofprehistoric artifacts and the culture and art of the Caucasus are located, as well as the second treasure gallery. The prehistoric artifacts date from thePaleolithic to theIron Age and were excavated all over Russia and other parts of the formerSoviet Union andRussian Empire. Among them is a renowned collection of the art and culture of nomadic tribes of theAltai fromPazyryk and Bashadar sites, including the world's oldest surviving knotted-pilecarpet and a well-preserved woodenchariot, both from the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The Caucasian exhibition includes a collection ofUrartu artifacts fromArmenia and WesternArmenia. Many of them were excavated atTeishebaini under the supervision ofBoris Piotrovsky, former director of the Hermitage Museum.
Four small rooms on the ground floor, enclosed in the middle of the New Hermitage between the room displaying Classical Antiquities, comprise the first treasure gallery, featuring western jewellery from the 4th millennium BC to the early 20th century AD. The second treasure gallery, located on the ground floor in the southwest corner of the Winter Palace, features jewellery from thePontic steppes,Caucasus and Asia, in particularScythian andSarmatian gold.
The Pavilion Hall
Pavilion Hall, designed byAndrei Stackenschneider in 1858, occupies the first floor of the Northern Pavilion in the Small Hermitage. It features the 18th-century goldenPeacock Clock byJames Cox and a collection ofmosaics. Two galleries spanning the west side of the Small Hermitage from the Northern to Southern Pavilion house an exhibition of Western European decorative and applied art from the 12th to 15th century and the fine art of theLow Countries from the 15th and 16th centuries.
The rooms on the first floor of the Old Hermitage were designed by Andrei Stakenschneider in revival styles in between 1851 and 1860, although the design survives only in some of them. They feature works ofItalian Renaissance artists, includingGiorgione,Titian,Veronese, as well asBenois Madonna andMadonna Litta attributed toLeonardo da Vinci or his school.
The first floor of New Hermitage contains three large interior spaces in the center of the museum complex with red walls and lit from above by skylights. These are adorned with 19th-century Russian lapidary works and feature Italian and Spanish canvases of the 16th–18th centuries, includingVeronese,Giambattista Pittoni,Tintoretto,Velázquez andMurillo.
The Knights' Hall, a large room in the eastern part of the New Hermitage originally designed in the Greek revival style for the display of coins, now hosts a collection of Western European arms and armour from the 15th–17th centuries, part of the Hermitage Arsenal collection.
The Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting adjoins the Knights' Hall and also flanks the skylight rooms. It was designed byLeo von Klenze in theGreek revival style as a prelude to the museum and features neoclassical marble sculptures byAntonio Canova and his followers. In the middle, the gallery opens to the main staircase of the New Hermitage, which served as the entrance to the museum before theOctober Revolution of 1917, but is now closed.
The first floor rooms on the southern facade of the Winter Palace are occupied by the collections of German fine art of the 16th century and French fine art of the 15th–18th centuries, including paintings byPoussin,Lorrain,Watteau. The collections of French decorative and applied art from the 17th–18th centuries and British applied and fine art from the 16th–19th century, includingThomas Gainsborough andJoshua Reynolds, are on display in nearby rooms facing thecourtyard.
The richly decorated interiors of the first floor of the Winter Palace on its eastern, northern and western sides are part of the Russian culture collection and host the exhibitions of Russian art from the 11th-19th centuries.
French Neoclassical, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist art
In 1764, Catherine commissionedYury Felten to build an extension on the east of theWinter Palace which he completed in 1766. Later it became the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. From 1767 to 1769, French architectJean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe built the Northern Pavilion on the Neva embankment. Between 1767 and 1775, the extensions were connected by galleries, where Catherine put her collections.[18] The entire neoclassical building is now known as the Small Hermitage. During the time of Catherine, the Hermitage was not a public museum and few people were allowed to view its holdings.Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe also rebuilt rooms in the second story of the south-east corner block that was originally built forElizabeth and later occupied byPeter III. The largest room in this particular apartment was the Audience Chamber (also called the Throne Hall) which consisted of 227 square meters.[17]
The Hermitage buildings served as a home and workplace for nearly a thousand people, including the Imperial family. In addition to this, they also served as an extravagant showplace for all kinds of Russian relics and displays of wealth prior to the art collections. Many events were held in these buildings including masquerades for the nobility, grand receptions and ceremonies for state and government officials. The "Hermitage complex" was a creation of Catherine's that allowed all kinds of festivities to take place in the palace, the theatre and even the museum of the Hermitage. This helped solidify the Hermitage as not only a dwelling place for the Imperial family, but also as an important symbol and memorial to the imperial Russian state. Today, the palace and the museum are one and the same. In Catherine's day, the Winter Palace served as a central part of what was called the Palace Square. The Palace Square served as St. Petersburg's nerve center by linking it to all the city's most important buildings. The presence of the Palace Square was extremely significant to the urban development of St. Petersburg, and while it became less of a nerve center later into the 20th century, its symbolic value was still very much preserved.[19]
Catherine acquired the best collections offered for sale by the heirs of prominent collectors. In 1769, she purchasedBrühl's collection, consisting of over 600 paintings and a vast number of prints and drawings, inSaxony. Three years later, she boughtCrozat's collection of paintings in France with the assistance ofDenis Diderot. Next, in 1779, she acquiredthe collection of 198 paintings that once belonged toRobert Walpole in London followed by a collection of 119 paintings in Paris from Count Baudouin in 1781. Catherine's favorite items to collect were believed to be engraved gems and cameos. At the inaugural exhibit of the Hermitage, opened byCharles, Prince of Wales in November 2000, there was an entire gallery devoted to representing and displaying Catherine's favorite items. In this gallery her cameos are displayed along with cabinet made by David Roentgen, which holds her engraved gems. As the symbol of Minerva was frequently used and favored by Catherine to represent her patronage of the arts, a cameo of Catherine as Minerva is also displayed here. This particular cameo was created for her by her daughter-in-law, the Grand DuchessMaria Fyodorovna. This is only a small representation of Catherine's vast collection of many antique and contemporary engraved gems and cameos.[20]
View of the Palace Embankment by Karl Beggrov, 1826. The Old Hermitage is in the middle of the painting.
The collection soon overgrew the building. In her lifetime, Catherine acquired 4,000 paintings from the old masters, 38,000 books, 10,000 engraved gems, 10,000 drawings, 16,000 coins and medals, and a natural history collection filling two galleries,[21] so in 1771 she commissioned Yury Felten to build another major extension. The neoclassical building was completed in 1787 and has come to be known as the Large Hermitage or Old Hermitage. Catherine also gave the name of the Hermitage toher private theatre, built nearby between 1783 and 1787 by the Italian architectGiacomo Quarenghi.[22] In London in 1787, Catherine acquired the collection of sculpture that belonged toLyde Browne, mostly Ancient Roman marbles. Catherine used them to adorn theCatherine Palace and park inTsarskoye Selo, but later they became the core of the Classical Antiquities collection of the Hermitage. From 1787 to 1792, Quarenghi designed and built a wing along theWinter Canal with the Raphael Loggias to replicate the loggia in theApostolic Palace in Rome designed byDonato Bramante and frescoed by Raphael.[18][23][24]
Catherine's collection of at least 4,000 paintings came to rival the older and more prestigious museums of Western Europe. Catherine took great pride in her collection and actively participated in extensive competitive art gathering and collecting that was prevalent in European royal court culture. Through her art collection she gained European acknowledgment and acceptance and portrayed Russia as an enlightened society. Catherine went on to invest much of her identity in being a patron of the arts. She was particularly fond of the Roman deity Minerva, whose characteristics according to classical tradition are military prowess, wisdom, and patronage of the arts. Using the title Catherine the Minerva, she created new institutions of literature and culture and also participated in many projects of her own, mostly play writing. The representation of Catherine alongside Minerva would come to be a tradition of enlightened patronage in Russia.[25]
In 1815,Alexander I of Russia purchased 38 pictures from the heirs ofJoséphine de Beauharnais, most of which had been looted by the French inKassel during the war. The Hermitage collection of Rembrandts was then considered the largest in the world. Also among Alexander's purchases from Josephine's estate were the first four sculptures by the neoclassical Italian sculptor Antonio Canova to enter the Hermitage collection.
The Raphael Loggias
Between 1840 and 1843, Vasily Stasov redesigned the interiors of the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. In 1838,Nicholas I commissioned the neoclassical German architectLeo von Klenze to design a building for the public museum. Space for the museum was made next to the Small Hermitage by the demolition of the Shepelev Palace and royal stables. The construction was overseen by the Russian architectsVasily Stasov and Nikolai Yefimov from 1842 to 1851 and incorporated Quarenghi's wing with the Raphael Loggias.
The New Hermitage was opened to the public on 5 February 1852.[26] In the same year theEgyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum emerged and was particularly enriched by items given by theDuke of Leuchtenberg, Nicholas I's son-in-law. Meanwhile, from 1851 to 1860, the interiors of the Old Hermitage were redesigned byAndrei Stackensneider to accommodate the State Assembly, Cabinet of Ministers and state apartments. Stakenschneider created the Pavilion Hall in the Northern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage from 1851 to 1858.[18]
In 1861, the Hermitage purchased from thePapal government part of theGiampietro Campana collection, which consisted mostly classical antiquities. These included over 500 vases, 200 bronzes and a number of marble statues. The Hermitage acquiredMadonna Litta, which was then attributed to Leonardo, in 1865, and Raphael'sConnestabile Madonna in 1870. In 1884 in Paris,Alexander III of Russia acquired the collection ofAlexander Basilewski, featuring European medieval and Renaissance artifacts. In 1885, the Arsenal collection of arms and armour, founded byAlexander I of Russia, was transferred from theCatherine Palace inTsarskoye Selo to the Hermitage. In 1914, Leonardo'sBenois Madonna was added to the collection.
Immediately after theRevolution of 1917, the Imperial Hermitage and the Winter Palace, the former Imperial residence, were proclaimed state museums and eventually merged.
A room in the Winter Palace
The range of the Hermitage's exhibits was further expanded when private art collections from severalpalaces of theRussian Tsars and numerous private mansions werenationalized and redistributed among major Soviet state museums. Particularly notable was the influx of old masters from theCatherine Palace, theAlexander Palace, theStroganov Palace, and theYusupov Palace, as well as from other palaces of Saint Petersburg and suburbs.
In 1922, a collection of 19th-century European paintings was transferred to the Hermitage from theAcademy of Arts. In turn, in 1927 about 500 important paintings were transferred to theCentral Museum of old Western art in Moscow at the insistence of the Soviet authorities.
In 1928, the Soviet government ordered the Hermitage to compile a list of valuable works of art for export. From 1930 to 1934, over two thousand works of art from the Hermitage collection were clandestinely sold at auctions abroad or directly to foreign officials and businesspeople. The sold items includedRaphael'sAlba Madonna,Titian'sVenus with a Mirror, andJan van Eyck'sAnnunciation, among other world known masterpieces byBotticelli,Rembrandt,Van Dyck, and others. In 1931Andrew W. Mellon acquired 21 works of art from the Hermitage and later donated them to form a nucleus of theNational Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (see alsoSoviet sale of Hermitage paintings).
During the later 1930s USSRGreat Purge, the museum staff were investigated by theNKVD for anti-Soviet activities. Staff with links to the pre-revolutionary aristocracy were sent into internal exile as socially dangerous persons, with a few going to gulag labour camps. The harshest investigation was into the Oriental Department. Under torture Dmitry Zhukov denouncedNikolai Nevsky as a member of a Japanese spy ring; both were executed in November 1938.[27]
Soviet ski troops by the portico during the Siege of Leningrad
With theGerman invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, before theSiege of Leningrad started, two trains with a considerable part of the collections were evacuated toSverdlovsk. Two bombs and a number of shells hit the museum buildings during the siege. The museum opened an exhibition in November 1944. In October 1945 the evacuated collections were brought back, and in November 1945 the museum reopened.
On 15 June 1985, a man later judged insane attacked Rembrandt's paintingDanaë, displayed in the museum. He threwsulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with a knife. The restoration of the painting had been accomplished by Hermitage conservationists by 1997, andDanaë is now on display behind armoured glass.
In 1991, it became known that some paintings looted by theRed Army in Germany in 1945 were held in the Hermitage. But only in October 1994 did the Hermitage officially announce that it had secretly been holding a major trove of FrenchImpressionist andPost-Impressionist paintings from German private collections. The exhibitionHidden Treasures Revealed, in which 74 of the paintings were displayed for the first time, was opened on 30 March 1995 in theNicholas Hall of the Winter Palace and lasted a year. Of the paintings, all but one originated from private rather than state German collections, including 56 paintings from theOtto Krebs collection, as well as the collection ofBernhard Koehler and paintings previously belonging toOtto Gerstenberg and his daughter Margarete Scharf, including the world-famousPlace de la Concorde byDegas,In the Garden byRenoir, andWhite House at Night byVan Gogh.[28][29][30] Some of the paintings are now on permanent display in several small rooms in the northeastern corner of the Winter Palace on the first floor.[31][32]
In 1993, the Russian government gave the eastern wing of the nearbyGeneral Staff Building across the Palace Square to the Hermitage and the new exhibition rooms in 1999. Since 2003, theGreat Courtyard of the Winter Palace has been open to the public.
In December 2004, the museum discovered another looted work of art:Venus Disarming Mars byRubens was once in the collection of theRheinsberg Palace near Berlin, and was apparently looted by Soviet troops from theKönigsberg Castle in East Prussia in 1945. At the time, Mikhail Piotrovsky said the painting would be cleaned and displayed.[34]
The museum announced in July 2006 that 221 minor items, including jewelry, Orthodox icons, silverware and richly enameled objects, had been stolen. The value of the stolen items was estimated to be approximately $543,000. By the end of 2006 several of the stolen items had been recovered.[35]
In March 2020, Apple released a continuous 5 hour and 19 minute one shot film recorded entirely on an iPhone 11 Pro detailing many rooms of the museum which highlighted not only the artwork, but also the architecture, and live movement pieces interspersed throughout.[36]
The Hermitage dependency inKazan (Tatarstan, Russia), opened in 2005. It was created with support from President of the Republic of TatarstanMintimer Shaimiev and is a subdivision of the Kazan Kremlin State Historical and Architectural Museum-Park. The museum is situated in theKazan Kremlin in an edifice previously occupied by the Junker School built in the beginning of the 19th century.[37]
Following the prior experiences in London,Las Vegas, Amsterdam and Kazan, the Hermitage foundation decided to create a further branch in Italy with the launch of a national bid. Several northern Italian cities expressed interest such as Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Turin. In 2007, the honor was awarded to the city ofFerrara which proposed itsCastle Estense as the base. Since then, the new institution calledErmitage Italia started a research and scientific collaboration with the Hermitage foundation.[38]
A Hermitage branch is due to open in Vladivostok by 2016, and the regional government has allocated more than Rb17.7 million ($558,000) for preliminary reconstruction work on a mansion in Vladivostok's historic downtown district to house the satellite.[39]
In recent years, there have been proposals to open aVilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in the capital city ofLithuania. Like the former Las Vegas dependency, the museum is to combine artworks from the Saint Petersburg Hermitage with works from the New York Guggenheim Museum.[40]
The dependency of the Hermitage Museum inAmsterdam was known as the Hermitage Amsterdam, and was located in the formerAmstelhof building. It opened on 24 February 2004 in a small building on theNieuwe Herengracht in Amsterdam, awaiting the closing of the retirement home which still occupied the Amstelhof building until 2007. Between 2007 and 2009, the Amstelhof was renovated and made suitable for the housing of the Amsterdam Hermitage. The Amsterdam Hermitage was opened on 19 June 2009 by PresidentDmitry Medvedev and QueenBeatrix of the Netherlands.[45] FollowingRussia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Amsterdam Hermitage severed ties with St. Petersburg,[46] being renamed toH'ART Museum the following year.[47][48]
The Hermitage Volunteer Service allows people to volunteer in helping to run the museum.[citation needed] The program aids the Hermitage with its external and internal activities and serves as an informal link between the museum staff and the public, bringing the specific knowledge of the museum's experts to the community. Volunteers may also develop projects reflecting personal goals and interests.[citation needed]
Russia-K, a Russian national television channel, has been presenting the various art collections of the Hermitage to the general public for years. There are a series of programs that have aired entitledMy Hermitage that have been particularly successful. All of these programs are organized by the Director of the Hermitage, Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky, and are quite similar to the broadcasts created by Academician Boris Piotrovsky, who is Mikhail's father. These programs were first broadcast through the Soviet Union's 'First' channel, airing at the height of the museum's boom. During this time, this channel recorded more than three million visitors every year, mostly from the Soviet Union. Another program created by the Hermitage was calledThe Treasures of St. Petersburg, and was broadcast on the St. Petersburg regional television. This program gave insight into what exhibitions were being displayed at the Hermitage.[50]
Treasures of St Petersburg & The Hermitage, (2003) a three-part documentary series for Channel 5 in the UK, directed by Graham Addicott and produced by Pille Runk.
Hermitage Revealed (2014) is a BBC documentary fromMargy Kinmonth. The film tells the story of its journey from imperial palace to state museum, investigating remarkable tales of dedication, devotion, ownership and ultimate sacrifice, showing how the collection came about, how it survived tumultuous revolutionary times and what makes the Hermitage unique today.[51]
Petersburg, a 1913 novel byAndrey Bely, features theWinter Canal near the palace as one of its central locations, but never names the Winter Palace directly.
Ghostwritten, byDavid Mitchell, features as one of its protagonists a woman who works for an art counterfeiting ring whilst masquerading as a docent in a gallery room on the upper floor of the Large Hermitage.
Sancar Seckiner's 2017 bookThilda's House (Thilda'nın Evi) includes a chapter highlighting the writer's experience at the Hermitage Museum by indicating several masterworks of the 15th–19th centuries.ISBN978-605-4160-88-4
The Hermitage appears in the first mission of the Soviet campaign in the video gameCommand and Conquer: Red Alert 3; it is under attack from forces of the Empire of the Rising Sun.
^Piotrovsky, Mikhail, "The Hermitage in the Context of the City," Museum International 55, no. 1, 79–80.
^Mason, Mary Willan, "The Treasures of Catherine the Great from the State Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg," Antiques & Collecting Magazine 106, no. 3, 62.
Frank, Christoph (2002), "Die Gemäldesammlungen Gotzkowsky, Eimbke und Stein: Zur Berliner Sammlungsgeschichte während des Siebenjährigen Krieges.", in Michael North (ed.),Kunstsammeln und Geschmack im 18. Jahrhundert (in German), Berlin: Berlin Verlag Spitz, pp. 117–194,ISBN3-8305-0312-1
The Hermitage Museum (2014),The Hermitage: 250 Masterworks, New York: Skira Rizzoli,ISBN978-0-84784-209-4
Kostenevich, Albert (1995),Hidden Treasures Revealed: Impressionist Masterpieces and Other Important French Paintings Preserved by the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, New York: Harry N. Abrams,ISBN0-81093-432-9
Renne, Elizaveta (2011),Sixteenth- to Nineteenth-Century British Painting. State Hermitage Museum Catalogue, Yale: Yale University Press,ISBN978-0-30017-046-7
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