The Days of the Hemitage Museum - 2012
Wonderful Collection of Book Treasures
250 years to the Hermitage Library
7 December 2012 - 17 March 2013
Twelve-Column Hall, New Hermitage

On December 07, 2012, at the Day of St. Catherine, in The Twelve-Column Hall of the New Hermitage an exhibition dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the Library of the State Hermitage Museum was opened. The jubilee exhibition features 234 book monuments which were received to the Library fund during two and a half centuries.

Some collections started to form as long ago as in Catherine II days. Among them there are albums with engravings, geographic maps and atlases, descriptions of travels, geographical research and discoveries. One of the example of fortunate book acquisitions of the Empress is Memories by L. Skrafton from the Voltaire library with his autograph, architectural treatises of famous architects (Marcus Vitruvius, Andrea Palladio).

Concurrently with the establishment of Mu"nzkabinett, the 225th anniversary of which was celebrated in November this year, in the Imperial Hermitage the beginning was set to the numismatic book collection, which also concentrated the literature on heraldry, the genealogy, and the medallic art. The numismatic part of the Library today includes the catalogues of the largest Mu"nzkabinetts of Europe of the 18th-20th century, full corpuses of coins of Greece, Rome, Britain, Italy - in total about 40 000 volumes.

Passion of Catherine II for the Russian history led to the appearance in the Library of Slavic manuscripts and theirs lists: annals, chronicles, lives. The acquisition of the manuscripts in Cyrillic and Latin, the medieval illuminated manuscripts continued throughout the entire history of the Imperial Library. This section of the exhibition is opened by a remarkable pergamic manuscript of the 11th century in Latin language: Marcus Tullius Cicero Treatise On the Friendship with impeccable grace of handwriting and text composition.

In 1792 together with the library of Peter III the books on military history, history of weapons, knights’ tournaments, wars and battles were receieved to the collection of Catherine II. The military topic has always been one of the main sections of the imperial collections. The worthy monument in the book collection is the multi-volume work of the military historian A.V.Viskovatov Historic Description of the Clothes and Weapons of the Russian Troops (1841-1862). This unique encyclopedia on the history of the military suit includes more than four thousand coloured lithographs.

In the 1850 ’s, one of the halls on the first floor of the New Hermitage, where the Book Museum was located, was allocated for the "Geography, Plans and Maps" section, the formation of which started in the second half of the 18th century: maps and atlases, descriptions of travels and geographic discoveries were essential for the collection of emperors and the grand dukes. Now the Library includes four thousand cartographic publications, the exhibition features one of the collection’s rarities - Mirror of Earth, or New Atlas by V.Blau (1643).

An important place in the imperial collection was taken by the Western European collections of symbols and emblems, collecting of which started in the days of Catherine and continues till present day.

From the 1920’s after the establishment of the Scientific Library of the Hermitage Museum, nationalized book libraries started transferring the books to its foundations, including manuscripts and publications in covers, albums with a engravings and watercolors. Works of bindery art equally as the rare items of the Hermitage collection of the Russian and European autographs form the separate sections of the exhibition.

At that time the Library starts forming the unique collection of the imperial gift items - books gifted to the Russian emperors from the days of Catherine II to the days of Nicholas II. The items gifted to the persons in reign were remarkable by their gorgeous printing, ingenious binding and were supplemented with ilustrations, drawings or engravings. Each of them beared the handwritten or printed dedication and the autograph of the grantor.

A special place in the Hermitage book depository is taken by the European and the Russian editions of the Bible and books on biblical subjects. The liturgical books were part of the personal library of the imperial family and the collection of the Cathedral of the Winter Palace, the Hermitage curators turned to them for attribution of plots of artistic works.

Within the imperial libraries the important place was taken by the books on the history and geography of the Russian cities, monasteries, architectural ensembles, as well as publications depicting people, flora and fauna of our planet. At the exhibition one can see the ensemles both gone into oblition (the residence of count A.A. Arakcheeva-village Gruzino, building of Bolshoy Theater in St. Petersburg) and preserved till present days (St. Sergius Lavra), lavishly illustrated works of the Academy of Sciences concerning the study of the Volga region, Ural, Crimea, Siberia, Altai, the most interesting books with images of national costumes of the peoples of the world. This section borders with the collection of albums of drawings and woodcuts of Japanese artists of the 17th and beginning of the 20th century which give a glimpse of the nature and everyday life of this eastern country.

The Hermitage Library possesses a remarkable collection of fashion magazines of the 18th - 19th centuries and books on the history of fashion. The most popular of those were the French magazines, which in addition to many descriptions and illustrations included the samples of fabrics and laces, and emboidery patterns ("Le Magasin des Demoiselles").

The Hermitage Book Collection includes an interesting collection of the bibliophilic book and the artist’s book (livre d’artiste). The European bibliophilic book is featured at the exhibition with the French editions of the late 19th and early 20th century. Russian small edition of the masters of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century (B.D.Grigoriev, A.E.Kruchenykh, K.S.Malevich) - are the real masterpieces of the graphic and applied art.

A new and extremely important for the Library and Museum section - "Hermitagiana" - is the full collection of works about the museum, its buildings, collections, separate monuments, published in the 18th - 21st centuries. Particular attention should be paid to the monuments from the Foundation of Manuscript Catalogues of the Library. The catalogue of the first library collection of the Empress Catherine II, library directories of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna evidence of the establishment of the Herimtage Library in the 18th - beginning of 20th century.

For the jubilee exhibition a scientific illustrated catalogue was issued (St.Petersburg, Publishing House of the State Hermitage, 2012) with the review articles on the history of the collection and the history of the Hermitage Library building, which was opened by the intoductory word of the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum M.B.Piotrovsky. The Exhibition Curator - Olga Georgievna Zimina, Deputy Manager of the Scientific Library of the Museum.