The State Hermitage Museum: Information

"History of the Hermitage"
Boris Piotrovsky

In 2000 the Iskusstvo Publishing House published "History of the Hermitage" written by Academician Boris Piotrovsky (1908-1990) who during 26 years was director of the State Hermitage. For many years Academician Boris Piotrovsky studied archive materials and literary documents connected with the history of the State Hermitage, from 1764 till the present time. The historical presentation is accompanied with an extensive collection of archive documents.

"The Hermitage, as one of the most important phenomena of the cultural history of Russia, is portrayed by the author both as a symbol of Russian history and a living organism made of human destinies and characters. His history of the Hermitage combines great events with small details which make these events look real... Using a lot of archive materials, he speaks about interesting people and describes a complicated system of the interaction of politicians, courtiers and scientists and the cooperation between directors and their assistants which over decades was forming this special institution, the Imperial or State Hermitage, an institution important for the culture, science and political life of Russia and other countries," wrote Mikhail Piotrovsky in his introduction to the book. The work, which the author did not complete during his lifetime, was achieved due to painstaking efforts of the personnel of the State Hermitage Archive who checked the materials cited in the book and their archive sources, with the direct participation of Boris Piotrovsky's widow Ripsime Dzhanpoladyan-Piotrovskaya and son Mikhail Piotrovsky. The book contains many illustrations including photocopies of documents from the Hermitage Archive, Ripsime Dzhanpoladyan-Piotrovskaya's personal archive and the Iskusstvo Publishing House archive of photographs. It reproduces pages from the original manuscript which give an idea of Boris Piotrovsky's approach to his work.

The book is published in Russian. Moscow, 2000.

"History of the Hermitage" by Boris Piotrovsky