Museums of Russia abroad: The State Hermitage presents the “Faces of the centuries” project in Japan

The exhibition of 89 paintings from the State Hermitage collection “Faces of the centuries” to open in Tokio in April of the next year will become one of the largest beyond the limits of Russia.

The concept of the exhibition is to present each of the five centuries – from the 16^th to the 20^th – by the paintings by great masters which reflect the epoch the best way.

Each century has its own subject in accordance to which the paintings were chosen. Renaissance of the 16^th century is the epoch of humanism, the 17^th is the century of baroque, the 18^th is the century of revolutions, from the Great French revolution to the industrial one in England, the 19^th is the century of evolution and romanticism and the 20^th is the century of advance guard.

This kind of concept brought together the works of the masters whom it is hard to find united by the single thematic exhibition. Titian and Rubens, Van Dyck and Picasso, Monet and Rembrandt, Delacroix and Cezanne – each of the great masters reflected his time and became its symbol.

The previous time the Japanese audience was offered the State Hermitage collection in 2006. Then, the “City and nature” exhibition was visited by 700, 000 people. After Tokio, in summer and autumn of the next year, the exhibition will be demonstrated in Nagoya and Osaka.