The Hermitage guide

One must also mention the exceptionally important frescoes discovered by the expendition of Nikolai Voronin in Smolensk among the remains of the so-called Church on the Stream (twelfth and early thirteenth centuries). These frescoes used to decorate the lower section of the walls and acrosoleae of the church. Although badly damaged, they have retained their original lively colouring, parts of the design, and also an ornamentation showing birds, lion figures, etc. These frescoes throw light on the art of mural painting in Smolensk, which until quite recently was completely unknown.

The Department owns a small but carefully chosen collection of specimens of Russian decorative art of the twelfth to seventeenth centuries. This includes a wide range of objects, from gold and silver church plate studded with precious stones, to everyday items, such as ceramic tiles, and tools made from iron, tin, lead, and copper: framed mirrors, processional lanterns, window-frames, inkwells, tableware, kitchen utensils, caskets, small icons, and other things. The wealth of their forms bears witness to the fine taste and high artistic skill of the craftsmen concerned. These masters had an amazing command of a great variety of techniques — chasing, forging, engraving, niello, filigree, and granulation — and effectively combined silver and gold, enamels, gems, and pearls. One thirteenth-century copperplate with a representation of St Mark in gold is particularly interesting, as is the work of the celebrated silversmiths and engravers of the Kremlin Armoury — a unique seventeenth-century door from the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in Veliky Ustiug, covered with numerous copperplates with gold and silver inlays and engraved biblical motifs.

There are also elegant silver koushes (scoops or ladles) of typically Russian forms, which remind one of a boat or perhaps a splendid bird swimming in the water, and spherical loving-cups decorated with ornamentation and inscriptions.

Finally, there is an extremely interesting collection of seventeenth-century Usolye enamels from the town of Solvychegodsk, including copper or silver bowls, scent bottles, caskets, and cups, all almost entirely covered with painted designs of brightly coloured enamels. These works have no counterparts in any other country. The Hermitage possesses many brilliant examples produced in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and showing a wealth of rich, saturated colours. Their intricate designs incorporate various flowers, birds and animals.

The collections illustrating the development of Russian culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are the most extensive and varied. Alongside paintings, sculptures, and works of the graphic arts, the Department preserves excellent collections of objects of applied and decorative art: furniture, textiles, and costumes, ceramics, gold and silver work, articles of copper, steel, bronze, stone, and wood.

The collection of paintings comprises almost 3,000 works by Russian artists — Vladimir Borovikovsky, Dmitry Levitsky, Karl Briullov, Alexei Venetsianov, Stepan Shchukin, Vasily Tropinin, and Nikolai Argunov; and foreign artists who lived in Russia, like Pietro Rotari, Carl Christineck, Jean-Louis Voile, and Johann-Baptist Lampi. This section differs from the famous collections of the Tretyakov Gallery or the Russian Museum in its approach to and choice of material, which is intended to illustrate the various stages in the progress of Russian culture. Of great interest to the cultural historian are portraits of Russian statesmen, scholars, inventors, writers, military leaders, and artists: Peter the Great, Boris Sheremetev, Mikhail Serdiukov, Andrei Nartov, Mikhail Lomonosov, Ivan Kulibin, Ivan Shuvalov, Gavrila Derzhavin, Alexander Suvorov, Francesco Bartolommeo Rastrelli, and many others; paintings by serf artists, such as M. Funtusov, Ivan Argunov, and Grigory Soroka; and portraits of people exemplifying various social types — landowners and civil servants, bankers, the military stationed in St Petersburg and in the provinces, retired soldiers, merchants, and minor officials.

Much information on the history of St Petersburg and Moscow is provided by the town views of such artists as the Swede Benjamin Patersson, who lived in Russia for more than thirty years, Karl Knappe, Fiodor Alexeyev, and Timofei Vasilyev. A series of paintings by pupils of Alexei Venetsianov (Yevgraf Krendovsky, Alexei Tyranov, Apollon Mokritsky, and others), showing palace interiors, help trace the architectural history of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. The battle scenes by Louis Caravacque, Alexander Kotzebue, Peter Hess, Auguste-Joseph Desarnod, Bogdan Willewalde, and other painters, record important events in the military history of the country.