The Hermitage guide

For all the exceptional wealth of its collections of paintings by Old Masters, the Hermitage picture gallery had, before 1917, some unfortunate lacunae. These were filled by numerous accessions from the nationalized private collections of Likhachov, the Miatlevs, Olives, Vorontsov-Dashkovs, Moussine-Pushkin, Paskevich, the Gagarins, Gorchakovs, Nikolai Roerich, Repnin, and Argutinsky-Dolgorukov. During the 1920s other well-known collections found their way to the Hermitage. These came from the Shuvalov, Yusupov, and Stroganov palaces, which had for a short time functioned as independent museums. In addition, various paintings reached the Hermitage from the Marble Palace and the Anichkov and Oldenburg palaces in the city, as well as from the royal residences at Gatchina, Ropsha, Pavlovsk, and Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin). The picture gallery is also indebted for many of its Old Masters to the redistribution of works of art among state-owned collections. Thus, for example, the Russian Museum in Leningrad transferred to the Hermitage some paintings by the Old Masters once owned by the Museum of Christian Antiquities.

Due to these additions it is now possible to follow the development of all the major national schools of painting. The exhibitions are arranged chronologically, with emphasis put on the highest points in the history of Western European art.

The collection of Italian paintings of the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries incorporated several rare works of the thirteenth-century Pisan school; pictures by Ugolino Lorenzetti Nardo di Cione, Spinello Aretino, Filippo Lippi, Alvise Vivarini, Lorenzo Costa, Francesco Francia, Filippino Lippi, Titian, Paolo Veronese, Lorenzo Lotto, Pontormo, Bartolommeo Manfredi, Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, Bernardo Strozzi, Francesco Guardi, Alessandro Magnasco, Bernardo Belotto, Antonio Canaletto, and canvases by many other artists.

Among the works of the Netherlandish, Dutch, and Flemish artists, received by the Museum at that time, were pictures by Hugo van der Goes, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Frans Floris, Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Adriaen Bloemaert, Gerard Terborch, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Salomon Ruysdael, Jacob Ruisdael, Willem Claesz Heda, Aelbert Cuyp, Pieter Claesz Heda, and by artists of the Rembrandt school. Other sections of the gallery also gained by the influx of pictures; outstanding among the new accessions were the works by Francisco Zurbaran, Hans Wertinger, Daniel Schultz, Johann Heinrich Schönfeldt, and a sizable collection of German paintings in which the works of Caspar David Friedrich were especially noteworthy.

Thanks to new acquisitions, the Hermitage was able to create a superb collection of French paintings, which boasts works by nearly all well-known French artists. Its collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French paintings can be compared to that of the Louvre alone.

The collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western European paintings has a completely different history. Its nucleus was formed by the so-called Kushelev Gallery, transferred to the Hermitage in 1922 from the Academy of Arts (where it had come by bequest of Kushelev-Bezborodko), and by a large number of paintings from the former Moscow collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov; these were received by the Hermitage in two stages, in 1930—31 and in 1948, from the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow. Today the exhibition of late nineteenth-century French art is one of the main attractions of the Hermitage. This collection is celebrated for its Monets and Renoirs, its eleven Cézannes, and its canvases by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Maurice Denis, Albert Marquet, André Derain, and Pablo Picasso.

At present new accessions enter the Department of Western European Art mainly through the Hermitage Purchasing Commission, which quite often manages to discover important works. A good example of this is Bellange’s Lamentation. One cannot but mention yet another source of acquisitions — gifts by collectors, artists, and art lovers. Armand Hammer, the American collector, for instance, presented to the Hermitage the Portrait of Antonia Zárate by Francisco Goya; Lydia Delectorskaya sent in from Paris some sculptures and drawings by Matisse; many active artists donate their works to the Museum.

Each of the Department’s exhibits justly deserves those words of high praise which usually convey our emotions when meeting with true masterpieces of art, works that embody the spiritual heritage of mankind.

B. Asvarishch

85

Simone Martini. 1284—1344. Italy

Madonna from the Annunciation

86

Antonio Rosselino. 1427—1478. Italy

Madonna and Child. Marble. 1460s

87

Filippino Lippi. 1457—1504. Italy

Adoration of the Infant Christ. Mid-1480s

88

Lorenzo Lorenzetto. 1490—1541. Italy

Dead Boy on a Dolphin. Marble

89

Michelangelo Buonarroti. 1475—1564. Italy