The Storm of the Twelfth Year...The Patriotic War of 1812 in materials of the State Hermitage Museum
25 December 2012 - 7 April 2013
Field Marshals’, Armorial and Picket Halls,
War Gallery

Since December 26, 2012, an exhibition entitled The Storm of the Twelfth Year... Patriotic War of 1812 in materials of the State Hermitage Museum has been on display in the state halls of the Winter Palace. Approximately 600 items on display will relate the events of the era of the Napoleonic wars.

On December 25, 1812 (New-Style January 6, 1813), while in Wilno, the Russian Emperor Alexander I approved the “HIGHEST MANIFEST TO SIGNIFY OUR GRATITUDE TO DIVINE PROVIDENCE FOR SAVING RUSSIA FROM THE DOOM THAT OVERSHADOWED HER”. On the same day, Alexander I signed another order, for the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to be erected in Moscow.

Two years later, in 1814, on the orders of Alexander I, annual “gratitude festivities” were established, to be celebrated on December 25 not only to mark Christmas Day but also to “commemorate the deliverance of the Russian Church and State from the invasion of Gauls and twelve languages therewith”. It was prescribed to minister a special prayer service after the liturgy. This prayer service, composed by Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, was included in the Church typikon and was conducted at all Russian churches.

The State Hermitage Museum is closely related to the event that took place 200 years ago. Memory of them is expressed not only in the architecture of Palace Square where the Triumphal Arc resonates with the Alexander Column but also in a number of interiors of the Winter Palace. Incarnated in the architectural de'cor of the Alexander, Picket, Armorial and the Field Marshals’ Hall and other halls of the Museum is the idea of honoring the Russian armed forces for having won glory on the fields of battle against Napoleon’s army. The War Gallery is of special importance in that regard. 332 portraits of the Russian army commanders as well as allied monarchs and warlords who led the troops of the anti-Napoleon coalition have transfigured it into a true Pantheon of the glorious heroes of the 1812-1814 campaign.

One of the most celebrated pages of Russian history were reflected in multiple works of the fine and applied arts, created by both contemporaries and later period artists, which are kept in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum. It is on the basis of these items that the exhibition The Storm of the Twelfth Year... was arranged.

The foundation and “backbone” of this exhibition on the tale of 1812 is focused on are battle pieces by Peter von Hess created by order of Emperor Nicholas I for installation in the Winter Palace halls. They represent all the major battles of the campaign.

This display is supplemented with numerous drawings and engravings, many of them made by eyewitnesses of the events represented, as well as material artifacts of the war: Russian and trophy war banners, gratuity medals and orders, the uniforms of Russian troops, equipment, hand weapons and firearms, memorial objects.

This is not just a set of things dating from the epoch in question. The banners have absorbed the powder smoke of battle, many uniform jackets are signed with the names of soldiers and officers who used to wear them and whose names actually on the lists of the military units they were enrolled with. The weapons have tasted enemies’ blood.

Trophies captured by the Russian army are equally represented. Among them are the baton of Marshal Davout seized by Platov’s Cossacks together with the marshal’s wagon train, examples of weapons of Napoleon’s guards and trophy French banners.

It is not only the events of the Patriotic War proper that the exhibition relates. It also encompasses the period from the first clash between the two emperors in 1805 to Napoleon’s death on Saint Helena in 1821, including the major battles, from Austerlitz to Leipzig, the history of diplomatic contact between Russia and France and the fate of Europe.

The curator of the exhibition is Viktor Vello-Osvaldovich Looga, a researcher and the custodian of the printed graphic works collection of the Department of Russian Culture of the State Hermitage Museum.

The State Hermitage Museum publishing house prepared a catalogue for the exhibition, opening with introductory remarks by the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky.