World Museums: Exhibition “Imperial Capitals: St. Petersburg – Vienna Masterpieces of Museum Collections”to open in the State Hermitage Museum

A new exhibition “Imperial Capitals: St. Petersburg – Vienna Masterpieces of Museum Collections” is going on display on October 5, 2018 in the State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg).

The State Hermitage and the Art History Museum in Vienna have long enjoyed friendly relations. They regularly exchange exhibitions and stage joint displays, to say nothing of the exchange of individual exhibits. Even the history of the two museums has much in common. Originally founded as the private collections of monarchs, they were both opened to the public in the second half of the 19th century, though without losing their universal character.

An interesting new project to show ‘paired’ paintings from the two museums is now in preparation. The organisers consider that fourteen paintings from each museum form pairs with those in the other museum: by the fact that they are by the same artist, by the similarity of their themes or by their common composition. 

This comparison helps to better understand the peculiar characteristics of each collection and the masterpieces it includes. It is proposed to show works by the most famous painters (Sandro Botticelli, Jacopo Tintoretto, Hans Holbein, Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn, Nicolas Poussin, Antoine Watteau). The exhibition is to open with two monumental portraits of empresses: Catherine II, who founded the Hermitage as an art collection, and her elder contemporary Maria Theresia, who moved the imperial collection to the Belvedere Palace in Vienna and did a great deal towards the systematisation of the collection.