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The Hermitage: Museum and Collections On 18 January, 2002, a large-scale exhibition organized by the State Hermitage Museum jointly with the Lipetsk Region Museum of Local History and Art was opened in Lipetsk. It shows 1107 exhibits which include monuments of ancient art and culture, masterpieces of West European and Russian art and rare books. The exhibition opens with paleolithic monuments and bronze artifacts of the ancient Caucasus. Especially remarkable are unique Sarmatian decorations in the so-called animal style. This section also includes objects of the 5th to the 13th centuries, female decorations found by archeologists in the Ural and Ladoga regions and in Veliky Novgorod and Kiev. The exhibition introduces ancient Greek and Roman art represented by statues, vases, objects from bronze and carved stone and jewelry. Marble torsos show one of the predominant themes of the Greek art, portrayal of athletes expressing the civic ideal of the Hellenes. The statue of a young athlete showed in the exhibit is a rare example in the museum's collection of the so-called strict style of Greek sculpture. The statuette of Hera (?) dating from the late 4th century BC is one of the few Greek originals kept at the Hermitage and serves as an illustration of one of the exhibition's themes, mythological characters. Art of toreutics of the classical age (5th-4th centuries BC) is represented by the sculptural group Lions and Deer which once decorated the handle of an unknown object. Noteworthy are bronze works executed by ancient masters. The bronze head of Annius Verus, son of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, shows the high level of the Roman art of portraiture. The history of Hermitage is closely connected with the history of the gallery of painting founded by Catherine II. By the end of the 18th century, the collection included oeuvres of such masters as Rafael, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Rembrandt, Rubens and Claude Gellet (Lorrain). Visitors can see Morning in Harbor (1634-1640) by Lorrain. The Hermitage treasures were being added to during the 19th century; the most important of the later contributions was the collection of Pyotr P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky donated to the museum in the beginning of the 20th century. It added to the Hermitage collection of Dutch and Flemish painting 700 works by masters who were hardly represented at all in the museum plus engravings the best of which can be seen in the exhibition. Among them is Rembrandt's etching Abraham and Isaac (1645). The West European and Russian sculptures dating from various epochs are all dedicated to ancient mythology. The State Hermitage Museum's collection of West European applied arts shows jewelry, silverware, furniture, works from semi-precious stones and artifacts from glass, porcelain and faience. The Russian section of the exhibition displays engraved portraits of the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and the princely couple of Peter Fedorovich and Catherine Alekseyevna and painted portraits of the Empress Catherine II, her husband Emperor Peter III, her son and heir Grand Duke Paul Petrovich and his wife Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna. Applied arts from the epochs of Peter I and Catherine II illustrate most interesting episodes in the history of Russian art. Engraved, lithographic and watercolor views of St. Petersburg showed in the exhibition were created during two centuries. The engravings by Aleksey Zubov and Peter Piquart show the new capital founded by Peter, while the panoramas made after drawings by Mikhail Makhayev display the beauty of the city as it celebrated its 50 years' jubilee in 1753. The engravings, with a light touch of watercolors, by Lauris pere and fils represent the grandeur of St. Petersburg at the end of the 18th century. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the "uniquely enchanting city " became the preoccupation of Alexandra P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva and Alexander N. Benoist. The works by Mstislav V. Dobuzhinsky and Pyotr A. Shilingovsky show the St. Petersburg of the first postrevolutionary years. The exhibition has a special section dealing with Alexander Pushkin and the Patriotic War of 1812. Paintings and engravings show the war's progress from the Napoleonic army's crossing of the Neman to the entry of the Russian army into Paris. The War Gallery of the Winter Palace as a monument to this victory is showed in a painting by Grigory Chernetsov. This section also displays two portraits of Pushkin, one made during his lifetime (G. Gippius, 1822), the other, by the 100th anniversary of his birth (V. Matais after an original by Orest Kiprensky). The largest museum library of art history books in Russia, sprung from the personal library of Catherine II, is represented by very interesting publications including such rarities as Arithmetic, Or the Science of Computation of Leonty Magnitsky or Instructions of Her Imperial Majesty Catherine II, Autocrat of All the Russias, to the Draft New Statute Commission. Special attention should be given to the books about the Hermitage from 1990-2000 which introduce visitors to the museum's publishing, research and educational activities. Here one can also see the first post mortem collection of Pushkin's works published by his friends to assist the poet's family. These books once belonged to the Tsarevitch Alexander Nikolayevich (future Emperor Alexander II). Slaviya Publishers put out for the exhibition a colorful booklet and an illustrated catalogue The Hermitage: Museum and Collections. The publication is opened with a foreword by Oleg P. Korolyov, Governor of the Lipetsk Region, and Dr. Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum. Introductions to the catalogue are written by L.P. Katerinkina, Director of the Lipetsk Region Museum of Local History and Art, and V.I. Dobrovolsky from Education Department of the State Hermitage Museum. |
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