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The Hermitage guide

Борис Иосифович Асварищ , Владимир Григорьевич Луконин , Всеволод Михайлович Потин , Ирина Витальевна Саверкина , Ксения Сергеевна Горбунова

And, finally, one must mention the unique collection of sixteenth- to nineteenth-century instruments, which contains rare sundials and sidereal clocks, telescopes, drawing and geodetic instruments, including some made in the workshops of the Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Mikhail Lomonosov and Ivan Kulibin. Among the various serrated saws and copying lathes of Peter the Great’s time there is some interesting machinery with self-propelled supports of advanced design, whose invention is usually accredited to Andrei Nartov.

The Department’s exhibitions are supplemented by displays arranged in several state rooms of the Winter Palace. The Concert Hall (designed by Quarenghi in 1793 and rebuilt by Stasov in 1839 after its destruction by fire in 1837) — an interior faced with white stucco — houses an exhibition of seventeenth- to twentieth-century Russian silver. The famous Malachite Room (1838—1839, designed by Alexander Briullov), whose malachite decor is unique, is connected with the events of the October Revolution. Here the counter-revolutionary Provisional government held its meetings. On the night of 25—26 October (N. S. 7—8 November) 1917, the ministers were arrested in the room next door (the so-called Private Dining Room) by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. In 1957 the Private Dining Room was turned into a memorial room and furnished as it had been in 1917.

A special place among the state rooms belongs to the 1812 War Gallery which Alexander Pushkin made the subject of one of his poems. It was constructed to Carlo Rossi’s designs in 1826 and restored after the 1837 fire. The gallery contains 332 portraits of generals who took part in the 1812 War and the foreign campaigns of 1813—14. The pictures were painted by the English artist George Dawe and by the Russians Alexander Poliakov and Vasily Golike.

The Great Throne Room (designed in 1792—1795 by Quarenghi; rebuilt after the 1837 fire by Stasov) is decorated in a colour scheme of white and gold: white Carrara marble and gilded bronze. In 1948 a mosaic map of the Soviet Union, made from Russian coloured stones, was installed here. The room also houses an exhibition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century carved stones.

In 1980 the Palace of Alexander Menshikov, one of the closest associates of Peter the Great, was placed, after years of reconstruction and restoration, at the disposal of the Hermitage. Situated on the University Embankment, the Palace is a most interesting monument of the history and architecture of St Petersburg in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. It is planned to unfold here an exhibition devoted to the Russian culture of the Petrine period.

The first eleven halls are already open to visitors. They include a walnut room and four rooms in which the ceiling and walls are faced with Dutch tiles.

G. Komelova, V. Vasilyev

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St Nicholas of Mozhaisk

Wooden sculpture. Russia. 17th century

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Silver cup with enamel inlays

Russia, Solvychegodsk. 17th century

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Bronze candelabrum

Russia. Mid-19th century

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Lidded silver tureen