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Presentation-edition
books
Detail of a watercolour
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Vase made of dark
green Riazevsk jasper
Yekaterinburg Lapidary Works
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This
spacious New Hermitage room, decorated with marble busts of ancient
philosophers and poets and sculptural depictions of noted statesmen,
public figures and scholars of the Modern Era, houses bookcases containing
publications on geography, maps and plans (about 2,000 volumes).Between
the 1840s and the 1860s the Hermitage library turned from the independent
book repository of Catherine's time into one of the personal libraries
of Emperor Nicholas I (the fourth). Its allotted role as a museum
library dictated limitations to the expansion of its stocks, which
from that time on took in only specialist literature on art, archaeology,
history and numismatics necessary to support research activities.
Separate book collections were created for the departments of the
Imperial Hermitage to assist the museum staff.
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