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| | In 1857 a room that had previously held Russian sculpture was given to the Cabinet of Original Drawings. Displayed in frames and cases are eighty works (some permanently on show, others changing several times a year). The Hermitage collection of drawings, systematized by schools in chronological order, numbers roughly 11,740 items. These include a host of first-rate drawings by artists belonging to various Western European schools of the 15th to 18th century (Dürer, Rembrandt, Van Dyke and Poussin among them). The foundations for this remarkable collection were laid by the acquisition by Catherine II of the art collections of Count Karl Cobenzl and Count Heinrich Brühl, a minister of the court of Saxony. In 1797 the separate sheets and albums included in the Hermitage inventory of drawings (6,798 works) were marked by a stamp consisting of Paul I's initial beneath a crown. This became the mark of the Hermitage collection. |
