The Hermitage guide

In 1834 the Pizzati collection arrived from Rome, and formed the nucleus of the Hermitage collection of painted vases, bronzes and terra-cottas. In the 1850s the collection of sculpture was greatly enriched by a number of new additions: The Resting Satyr and Athena (by sculptors of Phidias’s circle) from the collection of the Urals industrialists, the Demidovs; and forty-six sculptures from the Laval collection, including a magnificent bust of the Emperor Balbinus.

In 1861—62 the Hermitage acquired a large part of the fabulous Campana collection — 787 items, comprising a large number of Italic vases, bronzes and sculptures. Suffice it to say that these accessions included the monumental statue of Jupiter and a beautiful sculpture of Athena, known as Athena Campana. Many of the vases in the collection had been skilfully restored, and some of them even reconstructed, but in those days their authenticity was not questioned. It was only after thorough investigation that scholars have managed to identify the original parts and restore the authentic designs. In 1884 the Museum received a group of Tanagra statuettes and carved gems from Piotr Saburov, the Russian ambassador to Berlin.

The actual composition of the collection is largely a result of the way in which it was assembled. On the one hand, the personal taste of the agents entrusted with purchasing art works at European sales played a considerable role; on the other, the artistic interests of the royal family and the nobility who followed in its footsteps, were not to be neglected. This explains the great wealth of certain sections (gems, vases, Roman portrait sculptures), and the relative incompleteness of others. From around the turn of the century fewer and fewer works were purchased abroad, partly because a new, very important source of materials had appeared with the beginning of excavations in the south of Russia in the 1830s. Diverse art objects were discovered in the necropoli of Greek colonies founded on the Black Sea coast from the sixth century B.C. onwards. These finds soon became known all over the world, and have proved exceptionally valuable to archaeologists since, coming as they do from such rich burials as those of the Semibratny (Seven Brothers’), the Bolshaya Bliznitsa, Artiukhovsky and Kul-Oba Barrows, they can be dated with a fair degree of accuracy.

After the October Revolution of 1917, a number of decrees were issued by the Government for the purpose of protecting the artistic heritage of the young Soviet Republic. In accordance with these decrees, artistic and historic monuments were registered, private collections nationalized, and the export of objects of artistic and historic value was discontinued.

Many private collections (those of the Shuvalovs, the Stroganovs, Botkin, and Nelidova, among others) passed to the State Museum Reserve and thence to the Hermitage. The Department of Greek and Roman antiquities was thereby greatly enriched, the new additions including some genuine pearls of classical art, such as the Attic red-figure vase which earned its creator the title of the Shuvalov Painter.

Simultaneously a fundamental reorganization of the research and exhibition work of the Department was undertaken. A purely decorative approach to display was abandoned and complex exhibitions were arranged, based on the chronological principle. Through the careful study of the works, revision of dating, exclusion of fakes, and removal of roughly restored objects, it became possible to present a fairly accurate picture of the development of classical art and the material and spiritual culture of classical antiquity.

Today, the collection is being expanded by materials acquired in two main ways: first, from systematic archaeological excavations being carried out by the Hermitage in Berezan Island (near Ochakov), at Nymphaeum (near Kerch), and Ghersonesus (near Sevastopol); second, by the purchase of collections and individual works from private owners. Thus, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Purchasing Commission of the Hermitage bought over a hundred items from the collector Ivan Tolstoy, a professor of classical philology. They included interesting terracottas, vases, marble busts, and ancient glassware.

The Hermitage has an extremely rich and diverse collection of pottery. A jug from Temir Gora, a Berezan amphora with a group of komasts, and other works of Rhodian-Ionian provenance, discovered on the northern Black Sea coast, are the pride of the collection. The specimens brought to light in large numbers during excavations in Berezan Island permitted Soviet scholars not only to make a thorough investigation of the class of pottery to which they belong, but also to posit Miletus as the possible origin of one group of East Ionian vessels.