
{| align="right" | [[Image:Hemitage-exterior.jpg|right|250px|thumb|The Winter Palace overlooks the Neva River.]] |- | |- | |} The Hermitage Museum (Эрмитаж) in Saint Petersburg, Russia is one of the largest, oldest and most important art gallery in the world. The vast Hermitage collections are displayed in six buildings, the main one being the Winter Palace which used to be the official residence of the Russian Tsars. Strong points of the Hermitage collection of Western art include Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Antoine Watteau, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Canaletto, Antonio Canova, Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. But there is actually much more to see - the Russian imperial regalia, a superb assortment of Peter Carl Fabergé jewellery, and a breathtaking collection of ancient gold. == Origin == Catherine II of Russia started things off in 1764, when she purchased more than 250 paintings in Europe. Russian ambassadors in foreign capitals were commissioned to acquire the best collections offered for sale: Brühl's collection in Saxony, Crozat's in France and the Robert Walpole gallery in England. Catherine called her art gallery ''my hermitage'', as very few people were allowed within to see its riches. In one of her letters she lamented that "only the mice and I can admire all this." == Expansion in the 19th century == Gradually imperial collections were enriched by relics of Ancient Greece and Scythian culture, unearthed during excavations on ancient burial mounds in southern Russia. Thus started one of the world's richest collections of ancient gold, which now includes a substantial part of Troy's treasures unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann and seized from Berlin museums by the Red Army in 1945. To house the ever-expanding collection of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquity, Nicholas I commissioned the fashionable German architect Leo von Klenze to design a building for the public museum. Probably the first purpose-built art gallery in Eastern Europe, the New Hermitage was opened to the public in 1852. As the Russian tsars continued to amass their art holdings, several works of Leonardo da Vinci, Jan van Eyck, and Raphael were bought in Italy. The Hermitage collection of Rembrandts was considered the largest in the world; its quality is still unsurpassed. == Vicissitudes in the 20th century == The imperial Hermitage was proclaimed public property during the Russian Revolution of 1917. The range of its exhibits was further expanded when private art collections were being nationalization. Particularly remarkable was the influx of modern art from collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. New acquisitions included most of Paul Gauguin's later ouevre, a lot of Cubism works by Pablo Picasso, and such icons of modern art as Henri Matisse's ''La danse'' and Vincent van Gogh's ''Night Cafe''. The Soviet Union government did not pay much attention to maintenance of "bourgeois and decadent" art. What is worse, Joseph Stalin ordered some of the most precious Hermitage works to be sold abroad. These included unqualified masterpieces like Raphael's ''Madonna Alba'', Titian's ''Venus with a Mirror'' and Jan van Eyck's ''Annunication''. Acquired by Andrew W. Mellon, most of these works formed a nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.. There were other losses, though somewhat less irreplaceable: thousands of works were moved from the Hermitage collection to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and other museums across the USSR. The tragic period in Hermitage's history came to an end in 1945. At that time the government attempted to compensate recent losses by transferring to the museum some of the art looted by the Red Army in Germany during World War II. By far the most precious part of that booty were Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings taken from private collections of German business elite. These paintings were considered lost until 1995 when the museum unveiled them to the public. The Russian government maintains that these works provide just a small compensation for irreparable losses inflicted on Russian cultural heritage by the German invasion, including the almost complete destruction of Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo. Moreover, the State Duma passed a law forbidding return of disputed works to their owners in case they were guilty of financing the Nazi regime. == In the 21st century == In recent years, Hermitage expanded to the nearby building of the General Staff and launched several ambitious projects abroad, including the Guggenheim Museum Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Hermitage Rooms in London's Somerset House, and the ''Hermitage Amsterdam'' in the former Amstelhof, Amsterdam. The Hermitage was featured in the film ''Russian Ark'', an incredible single shot walk through with period reenactments spanning three hundred years of court meetings, balls, and family life in the Winter Palace. == External links == * [http://www.hermitage.ru Official web site] * [http://www.hermitage.nl Hermitage Amsterdam] * [http://www.guggenheimlasvegas.org Guggenheim Hermitage Museum] * [http://www.hermitagerooms.com Hermitage rooms in London] Art museums and galleries in Russia Saint Petersburg
In the [http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/ official website] of the museum, it referrs to itself as The State Hermitage Museum. I suppose the page shouldn't be moved as the shorter form seems to be more widely used, but probably the full name should be mentioned (as of now, State Hermitage Museum is a redirect). --User:Juzeris | User talk:Juzeris 08:48, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Hermitage_Museum:
Hermitage_Museum
Hermitage_Museum
Hermitage Museum
{| align="right" | [[Image:Hemitage-exterior.jpg|right|250px|thumb|The Winter Palace overlooks the Neva River.]] |- | |- | |} The Hermitage Museum (Эрмитаж) in Saint Petersburg, Russia is one of the largest, oldest and most important art gallery in the world. The vast Hermitage collections are displayed in six buildings, the main one being the Winter Palace which used to be the official residence of the Russian Tsars. Strong points of the Hermitage collection of Western art include Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Rembrandt, Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Antoine Watteau, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Canaletto, Antonio Canova, Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. But there is actually much more to see - the Russian imperial regalia, a superb assortment of Peter Carl Fabergé jewellery, and a breathtaking collection of ancient gold. == Origin == Catherine II of Russia started things off in 1764, when she purchased more than 250 paintings in Europe. Russian ambassadors in foreign capitals were commissioned to acquire the best collections offered for sale: Brühl's collection in Saxony, Crozat's in France and the Robert Walpole gallery in England. Catherine called her art gallery ''my hermitage'', as very few people were allowed within to see its riches. In one of her letters she lamented that "only the mice and I can admire all this." == Expansion in the 19th century == Gradually imperial collections were enriched by relics of Ancient Greece and Scythian culture, unearthed during excavations on ancient burial mounds in southern Russia. Thus started one of the world's richest collections of ancient gold, which now includes a substantial part of Troy's treasures unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann and seized from Berlin museums by the Red Army in 1945. To house the ever-expanding collection of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquity, Nicholas I commissioned the fashionable German architect Leo von Klenze to design a building for the public museum. Probably the first purpose-built art gallery in Eastern Europe, the New Hermitage was opened to the public in 1852. As the Russian tsars continued to amass their art holdings, several works of Leonardo da Vinci, Jan van Eyck, and Raphael were bought in Italy. The Hermitage collection of Rembrandts was considered the largest in the world; its quality is still unsurpassed. == Vicissitudes in the 20th century == The imperial Hermitage was proclaimed public property during the Russian Revolution of 1917. The range of its exhibits was further expanded when private art collections were being nationalization. Particularly remarkable was the influx of modern art from collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. New acquisitions included most of Paul Gauguin's later ouevre, a lot of Cubism works by Pablo Picasso, and such icons of modern art as Henri Matisse's ''La danse'' and Vincent van Gogh's ''Night Cafe''. The Soviet Union government did not pay much attention to maintenance of "bourgeois and decadent" art. What is worse, Joseph Stalin ordered some of the most precious Hermitage works to be sold abroad. These included unqualified masterpieces like Raphael's ''Madonna Alba'', Titian's ''Venus with a Mirror'' and Jan van Eyck's ''Annunication''. Acquired by Andrew W. Mellon, most of these works formed a nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.. There were other losses, though somewhat less irreplaceable: thousands of works were moved from the Hermitage collection to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and other museums across the USSR. The tragic period in Hermitage's history came to an end in 1945. At that time the government attempted to compensate recent losses by transferring to the museum some of the art looted by the Red Army in Germany during World War II. By far the most precious part of that booty were Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings taken from private collections of German business elite. These paintings were considered lost until 1995 when the museum unveiled them to the public. The Russian government maintains that these works provide just a small compensation for irreparable losses inflicted on Russian cultural heritage by the German invasion, including the almost complete destruction of Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo. Moreover, the State Duma passed a law forbidding return of disputed works to their owners in case they were guilty of financing the Nazi regime. == In the 21st century == In recent years, Hermitage expanded to the nearby building of the General Staff and launched several ambitious projects abroad, including the Guggenheim Museum Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Hermitage Rooms in London's Somerset House, and the ''Hermitage Amsterdam'' in the former Amstelhof, Amsterdam. The Hermitage was featured in the film ''Russian Ark'', an incredible single shot walk through with period reenactments spanning three hundred years of court meetings, balls, and family life in the Winter Palace. == External links == * [http://www.hermitage.ru Official web site] * [http://www.hermitage.nl Hermitage Amsterdam] * [http://www.guggenheimlasvegas.org Guggenheim Hermitage Museum] * [http://www.hermitagerooms.com Hermitage rooms in London] Art museums and galleries in Russia Saint Petersburg
Hermitage Museum
In the [http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/ official website] of the museum, it referrs to itself as The State Hermitage Museum. I suppose the page shouldn't be moved as the shorter form seems to be more widely used, but probably the full name should be mentioned (as of now, State Hermitage Museum is a redirect). --User:Juzeris | User talk:Juzeris 08:48, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
H
HA | HB | HC | HD | HE | HF | HG | HI | HJ | HK | HL | HM | HN | HO | HP | HR | HS | HT | HU | HW | HX | HY | HZ |Words begining with Hermitage_Museum:
Hermitage_Museum
Hermitage_Museum
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