Masterpieces from the World’s Museums in the Hermitage. Rembrandt, Pallas Athena, from the Collection of the Galouste Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon)

On 3 November 2005 a new exhibition in the series entitled Masterpieces from the World’s Museums opened in the State Hermitage. The show features Rembrandt’s painting of the Pallas Athena from the collection of the Galouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. One of Rembrandt’s (1606-1669) celebrated works has now returned for a while to the Hermitage on the eve of an important anniversary marking 400 years from the great 17th century Dutch artist’s birth in 1606.

The Pallas Athena has for many years belonged to the Galouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. However, it has unseen ties from the past binding it to the Hermitage. From the end of the 18th century right up to the 1930’s this work by Rembrandt decorated the Hermitage gallery.

Athena (canvas, oil, 118 õ 91 cm) arrived in St Petersburg as part of the large Count Baudouin Collection which was purchased in France in 1781 for Empress Catherine the Great. In 1930 the painting’s fate took a sharp change in direction, as happened to many other works of art at the time. In May 1930, following a decision of the Soviet Government, Rembrandt’s Pallas Athena was sold to the oil magnate and well-known collector Galouste Gulbenkian (1869 -1955). As a result of secret agreements concluded in Paris between the entrepreneur and representatives of Gostorg RSFSR, the Hermitage was compelled to turn over a number of precious jewels and works of art to the office of the agency Antikvariat. The Athena was in an especially valuable shipment of art objects which included masterpiece paintings by Rembrandt, Gerard Terborch, Watteau, and Nicolas Lancret, as well as Houdon’s celebrated statue Diana the Huntress. Galouste Gulbenkian paid the Soviet Government a total of 140,000 pounds sterling for these museum exhibits.

The museum management’s protests were to no avail. It is known that Rembrandt’s Athena was sent to Paris via the Berlin customs office in its gilded frame from the Hermitage. It is displayed in the present exhibition it this same frame.

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A brochure "Masterpieces from the World’s Museums in the Hermitage. Rembrandt, Pallas Athena, from the Collection of the Galouste Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon)"

At the opening ceremony