Hermitage
(Hermitage, Ermitage, Ýðìèòàæ, in St. Petersburg, St.Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Saint-Petersbourg, Sankt-Petersburg, Sankt-Petersurg, Ñàíêò-Ïåòåðáóðã) . External links open in a new browser window. Russian words and phrases are in Cyrillic Windows encoding.
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The best place to start your virtual acquaintance with the Hermitage is the
museum’s own website: www.hermitagemuseum.org.
In many respects the site is excellent, but it is not a substitute for actual
in-person discovery. Online exhibits cover a small fraction of Hermitage collections
(which at the latest count consisted of three million items).
Barely had the dust settled on the Winter Palace construction site in 1762, as in 1764, a separate adjacent structure, the Hermitage, was built to house the first art collections. Contrary to popular beliefs and some Soviet (as well as recent foreign propaganda), Hermitage was designed as a museum from day one. First fine art collection of 225 Flemish and Dutch paintings was purchased for the Hermitage through Johann-Ernst Gotzkowsky, a Berlin-based merchant. Johann Gotzkowsky (also Gockowski) was a rags-to-riches celebrity of his time and a confidant of Frederic the Great. Despite that monarch’s alleged greatness, he nearly bankrupted Prussia through his endless wars and the king had to sell his art collection through Gotzkowsky, who himself was also at the brink of bankruptcy thanks to his purchases of grain from Russia during second part of the Seven Years War for which he found himself unable to pay. This acquisition became a part of the permanent exhibition when the museum opened in 1764. Under Catherine II (or Catherine the Great) the Hermitage became the home of the newly founded Russian Library (Russkaia Biblioteka, Ðóññêàÿ áèáëèîòåêà), precursor to the modern National Library of Russia (it is no longer part of the Hermitage). Catherine II, an avid collector, had assembled a brilliant team of art lovers and critics – from Duke Golitsyn (Golitsine, Golitsyne, Golitsin) to Denis Diderot, - whose aid and counsel helped to ensure that the quality of collection remained very high.
Collections grew at exponential rate throughout the late 18 and 19 centuries. The Crown and the directors of the museum did not chase rare paintings at international auctions. Instead, they bought wholesale collections of private individuals, nobility and even States throughout Europe, usually when the seller was in dire financial circumstances, and preferrably on the cheap. In that time the Hermitage became the beneficiary of many private endowments and donations. Since Monarchy represented the Russian State, Hermitage became a vast public acquisition vehicle, national mutual fund for arts and antiquities, an enterprise that remains unique by virtue of its immense scale and stands out among others by comprehensiveness and cohesion of its assorted collections.
Here is an excellent article
on the history of Hermitage by Vladimir Matveev (Matveiev, Matveyev) at
the site of Canadian Friends of Hermitage (Les amis canadiens de l'Ermitage).
The article illustrates the tragedy of Hermitage after Bolshevist putsch. In
the 1920 and 1930s Soviet authorities used to sell off paintings and art objects
from Hermitage and other collections on the international market. Normally,
although there was hardly anything normal about these transactions, this was
distressed “fire sale” kind of enterprise. The sellers had little or no understanding
of the true value of objects they were selling. As usual, most of the plundered
treasures ended up in the United States.
The article mentions another phenomenon of the Soviet era: re-distribution of
exhibits among different regional museums at the expense of older pre-Soviet
collections.
Another sad part of Russian and Hermitage history the article omits is the confiscation
of private property and private art collections in the aftermath of the Bolshevist
putsch. After Communists usurped power in Russia, they nationalized all private
collections of art and antiquities. Apartments and houses of prominent private
individuals were raided and huge quantities of nationalized (read stolen) art
objects were piled up in warehouses to be later sold for hard cash to profiteering
foreigners or given to museums. Many treasures were simply lost in the looting
frenzy. This was the time when Hermitage underwent transformation from being
a traditional European museum, albeit an extraordinarily large one, to becoming
something of an art warehouse. Many Hermitage exhibits of late 19 century and
early 20 century art, works of French impressionists in particular, are in fact
looted private belongings. Obviously, owners of these objects never received
any compensation and were lucky to escape with their lives, and remain in the
country or flee abroad.
The remarkable characteristic of Hermitage collections that closely echoes history
of St. Petersburg and of Russia is that its development in respect to relations
with the rest of Europe ceases abruptly at the time of WWI. Unlike its Russian
predecessors who generally bought and collected art, Soviet rulers sold art
objects from looted private and public collections to finance the Communist
enterprise and the global revolution chimera. Naturally, no private collectors
capable of purchasing art at international auctions even existed in the USSR.
Aside from objects from archaeological excavation in the Soviet Union, some
exchanges, very marginal WWII booty and a small number of foreign gifts, the
relation of Hermitage to European and international art ends at 1917. The timeline
is broken and the lack of post-WWI art is rather striking but is not limited
to Hermitage: there are no important international museums of international
modern art in Russia. This situation may and I hope will change. As of now,
government Soviet-era regulations and laws exclude Russian citizens from international
art trade. Being unable to sell historic or valuable modern art or to buy art
abroad without having to pay ridiculous duties (never mind the recent historic
memory of nationalization), no important international art collections or private
museums can possibly emerge in Russia. In the past, Russia had its fair share
of art connoisseurs and passionate art collectors (modern Russian museums stand
as a testimony to that). When Russian laws, regulations and society itself return
to normalcy or become more similar to nations such as France or UK, new private
museums and collections will again appear, then grow and expand. The Hermitage,
Russia’s most important museum and arguably one of the largest and most comprehensive
repositories of artifacts and of art documenting human creativity in the world,
would only benefit from this process and it will remain the guiding light to
anyone who cares about art and human history in Russia and beyond.
Because of its vastness and its comprehensiveness, Hermitage can be described
as the world’s ultimate museum. Its departments are so extensive that they could
be separate great museums on their own. If you attempt to explore it in one
or two days, you are bound to fail. Hermitage size and scale can occasionally
be quite intimidating. As a child, from the age of 9 to 12, I went to the Hermitage
twice or three times every week. My school was not that far away and I belonged
one of Hermitage children’s art workshops. The Hermitage has always been a priceless
educational resource. At that age – from 9 to about 12, I was mostly interested
in ancient Egypt – mummies and stuffed cats and crocodiles, archeology of Mesopotamia,
Greece, Rome and medieval armor, which all seemed far more exciting than those“boring
paintings.” For hours I wandered through the halls and seemingly endless corridors
of this great museum and its vast buildings. Now as adult and many years later
I find Hermitage somewhat too big and a sometimes too unapproachable. From time
to time you can’t avoid the feeling of being trapped inside a vast warehouse
of art and historic objects, and even a seasoned explorer can quickly succumb
to exhaustion and become mentally (and occasions physically) lost. One way of
avoiding being overwhelmed or lost is to make a plan for what you want to see,
then go there, explore the exhibition of your choice while trying not to get
distracted by other treasures. This advise is hardly of any help to someone
who has a few hours for seeing the museum or came in on a guided tour.
Hermitage collections are brilliantly classified and thoughtfully arranged although
some of them overlap, and some classifications – such as listing Byzantine art
in the Oriental Art category along with China, and not with Rome and Greece,
strike me as dubious. Hermitage is one vast encyclopedia of human creativity,
it’s all here: from the historic origins of humanity – or from emergence of
agricultural society – to the modern times, or roughly to 1914.
Here are a few highlights of Hermitage departments:
Antiquities: archeology of early society Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Greece
and Rome. The scope here is immense: from Neolithic and Paleolithic societies
to Babylonian artifacts, from Egypt to ancient Greece and Rome, from Hellenic
world of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to ancient China.
Middle Ages: art and culture. Middle Ages in Europe and Middle Ages of the Arab
world, India, China, Mongolia, Japan.
Renaissance – Hermitage has one of the world’s best collections of both art
and objects from Southern and Northern Renaissance.
1000 years of applied art, furniture, clothing and jewelry of Western Europe.
Armor collection.
Coins, medals and state regalia (over million items represent all imaginable
states and in fact entire human civilizations).
Most people go to Hermitage to see European paintings and sculpture. With some
hundreds of thousands exhibits on display, from early Christian portraits to
Impressionists, the collections are inexhaustible as is the register of names
of artists who created these masterpieces. Kranach, Bosch, Leonardo da Vinci,
Titian, Giorgione, Raphael, Caravaggio, Brueghel, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck,
Velazquez, Goya, Delacroix, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso,
Matisse are a just a few names from this immense list.
Don’t forget to pay a visit to the Hermitage
website and explore the exhibitions. Occasionally, their navigational system
is malfunctioning, but their search feature is always operational. Just the
type the name of artist or subject that you are interested in, and then discover
online treasures of the Hermitage.
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