“Winter Palace is a Masterpiece…”. The Presidential Library dedicated a new collection to the 255th anniversary of the Hermitage

Marking the 255th anniversary of the State Hermitage Museum - the largest art and cultural-historical museum in Russia and the world, which is celebrated in December 2019, the Presidential Library presented on its portal a new collection The State Hermitage Museum which consists of five sections: Publications on the History of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, Archival Materials, Postcards, Photographs, Video Materials.

The electronic collections include publications from the 19th – 20th centuries on the history of the museum and its art collection; archival documents on the formation of the Hermitage collection and the museum staff; records of the organization of balls and masquerades in the palace; information about the publishing activities of the institution; evidence of the fire of 1837 and the position of the museum during the 1917 revolution; visual material (postcards and photographs with views of the buildings of the Hermitage, its halls and collections); the museum documentary and historical newsreel of 1906.

The founding date of the Hermitage is 1764, when Catherine II acquired in Berlin from the Prussian merchant Johann Ernst Gotskovsky, at the expense of his duty for the unsuccessful supply of grain for the Russian army, a collection of paintings consisting of 317 paintings by Flemish, Dutch and Italian artists of the first half of the 17th century. The paintings were placed in a secluded apartment of the Winter Palace under the name "Hermitage" (from the French Ermitage - a place of solitude, the hermit's home, secluded corner), and then this name was transferred to the entire museum collection.

Large private collections of paintings by eminent authors were bought abroad: Bruhl (1769), Croz (1772), Walpole (1779), and others to add the Hermitage’s collections. By 1774, the catalog of paintings of the Winter Palace totaled 2080 works. In addition to paintings, the collection received collections of engravings and drawings of ancient antiquity, works of Western European decorative art, coins and medals, as well as books, for example, the Voltaire library.  

“The decoration of the Winter Palace is the Treasury, located in one of the halls of the second floor”, - the Guide around St. Petersburg continues to educate guests of the Northern capital. - In a glass box in the middle of the hall there are the attributes of the Imperial power; the most precious thing between them is the Scepter with the famous Orlov diamond. There are various legends about his fate; according to the most common of them, this diamond is the eye of a golden lion from the throne of the Great Mogol in Delhi, stolen by one scoop and resold several times; then the diamond passed into the hands of the Armenian merchant Lazarev, from whom Count Orlov bought it in Amsterdam and presented it to Empress Catherine II. He paid 450,000 rubles for a stone, and, in addition, gave a rent of 2,000 rubles and a noble diploma".  

“The military portrait gallery, familiar to everyone, which constitutes an invaluable monument of the famous Patriotic War, was recreated, like everything in the palace, on the basis of the previous idea, but with great improvements: it is enlarged as much as the White Hall; now there is more space for the banners of the guards regiments, always standing at the beginning of this gallery, as if guarded by images of those whom they glorified during the immortal struggle of Russia with the arrogant giant of victories and the indulgence of happiness. The ceiling is raised, more light is given from above (through the “lanterns” - the gaps of the ceiling)”, - writes A. Bashutsky, already mentioned, in the article “Resumption of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg”.

In the XIX century the Hermitage collections were grown with archaeological excavations, which, in particular, formed the basis of the famous Scythian collection, as well as the works of Russian painters, some of which were transferred to the State Russian Museum in 1895.

Until the mid-19th century, the Hermitage remained a closed museum, and only a few were able to visit it. For the general public, the art collection became available under Emperor Nicholas I on February 5 (the 17th in the new style) in 1852 in the building of the New Hermitage specially built for this purpose. Since that time, the Hermitage has occupied five buildings connected to each other on Palace Embankment: the Winter Palace (1754–1762, architect V.V. Rastrelli), the Small Hermitage (1764–1767, architect J. B. Wallen-Delamotte), and the Old Hermitage (1771–1787, architect J. M. Felten), the New Hermitage (1839–1852, architect L. von Klenze) and the Hermitage Theater (1783–1787, architect J. Quarenghi).

The contribution of Emperor Nicholas I to the development of the Hermitage, on the one hand, is undeniable, on the other hand, it raises questions among cultural historians. Art critic Nikolai Wrangel, before assessing the state of the Hermitage during the reign of Nicholas I, draws his psychological portrait: “The mind of a small outlook, always adamant, almost stubborn and never doubting anything; a powerful ruler, often with non-Russian thoughts and tastes, but always purely Russian in scope; the emperor in everything, and in military affairs, and in art. In the latter, he imagined himself to be a special connoisseur, "what everyone should be in his position". But above all, the emperor was a military man in everything, including manners and tastes.

Not wanting to put up with anything that reminded him of “controversial” episodes from his own life or his ancestors, Nikolai banished this kind of memory from the royal chambers. It is known that many precious manuscripts and memoirs of members of the royal family were devoted to burning them. Not wanting to see anything that would remind him of the favorites of his august grandmother, the Sovereign ordered to take away from the Hermitage and give to posterity all the portraits of the favorites of Catherine II. Thus the portraits of the Zubovs, Dmitriev-Mamonov, Alexander Lansky were exiled. Fortunately, all of them, having gone through a series of ordeals, after many years took their places in the Museum of Emperor Alexander III and, thus, these portraits by Lumpy, Shibanov and Levitsky were preserved to this day”.  

The fate and the portraits of the Decembrists could become deplorable, although almost all of them were heroes of the war of 1812. Nikolai Pavlovich, not wishing to recall the tragic episode of his accession to the tsardom, ordered the portraits of all those participating in the December uprising to be removed from the Gallery of Heroes of the Twelfth Year. For decades the painting were stored in the cellars of the Winter Palace, and in 1903 were returned to the exhibition.

Today, the Hermitage is one of the largest art and cultural-historical museums in the world. Its collections feature the richest collections of monuments of primitive, ancient Eastern, ancient Egyptian, ancient and medieval cultures, art of Western and Eastern Europe, archaeological and artistic monuments of Asia and Russian culture of the VIII – XIX centuries.