On 30 June 2006 the State Hermitage hosted the awards ceremony for the Grinzane-Hermitage Prize. The very first winners of this new prize are Salvatore Settis, Professor of History and Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and Sergei Androsov, doctor of art history and member of the Hermitage's Academic Council.

The Grinzane-Hermitage Prize competition enjoys the patronage of the State Hermitage, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy, the Region of Piedmont and the Russian branch of the Italian company Ferrero, with participation by the General Consulate of Italy in St Petersburg. Linked with the name of one of the best known museums in the world, the prize is dedicated to publications dealing with art in all its manifestations: from painting to design, from sculpture to architecture. Its objective is to facilitate study of our artistic heritage in which many and fruitful ties bind together Italy and Russia.

Relations between the two countries go back to the 18th century, to the reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, when Italian artists and architects appeared on the banks of the Neva and enriched with their art the city that was destined to become a great Baltic capital: St Petersburg.

This year's laureates were chosen by a jury consisting of Michael Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage; Giuliano Soria, President of the Grinzane Cavour Prize; Sergei Daniel, Professor of the I.E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in the Russian Academy of Arts and of the European University in St Petersburg; and Arnaldo Colosanti, wirter and literary critic.

In association with the Grinzane-Hermitage Prize, within St Petersburg State University a permanent student jury has been created and, with support from the Assesore on Cultural Matters of the Region of Piedmont, they will award a prize to the best young Russian translator of works by Piedmont authors.

The awards ceremony took place in the Hermitage Theatre, which was built according to plans drawn up by architect Giacomo Quarenghi in the Palladio style. The new laureates of the Grinzane - Hermitage Prize then read lectures and a Round Table discussion was held on the topic of the "Future of Museums" in which, alongside Sergei Androsov and Salvatore Settis, the participants included Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky, Deputy Director of the Hermitage for Scientific Work Georgy Vilinbakhov, Director of the Vatican Museums Francesco Buranelli, President of the Foundation of the Museum of Ancient Egyptian Art in Turin Alain Elkann, and Professor of the I.E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in the Russian Academy of Arts Sergei Daniel.

The Grinzane Prize for literature was established in 1981 and over the course of its 25 year existence has become an authoritative international prize which is awarded to authors of works in the most diverse fields of culture and art dedicated to artistic interrelationships. More than 400 Italian and foreign writers have become laureates of the Prize. Several of them later went on to receive the Nobel Prize. The Grinzane Prize is awarded each year in July in the historical castle of Grinzane Cavour in Piedmont. Moreover, there are a series of international prizes: the Grinzane-Havana, the Grinzane - Montevideo, the Grinzane - Moscow, and the Grinzane - France Prizes. In 2001 the Grinzane Cavour Prize was given to UNESCO as an organization which has made an invaluable contribution to world culture.

The awards ceremony coincides with the Piedmont Book Fair. In the foyer of the Hermitage Theatre publications on art, languages and literature are on display.

Salvatore Settis was born in 1941 in the city of Rosarno. He is the author of numerous essays in specialized magazines and of the works An Essay on the Subject of Aphrodite Urania by Phidias (1966); The Column of Trajan (1988); Laocoon. Glory and Style (1999); Italy Inc. (2002); The Future of the Classic (2004) and Iconography of Italian Art 1100-1500: The Line (2005).

Settis was the editor of a number of collections of articles including the three volume Memory of the Antique in Italian Art (1984-1986), The Greeks. History. Art. Culture. Society (1996-2002) and the first two volumes of the History of Calabria (2005). He has been a guest lecturer in many different European and American universities. Between 1994 and 1999 he directed the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Then he returned to Pisa, where he serves as Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore and teaches the history of art and history of classical archeology.

The circle of Settis' research interests takes in, first of all, the history of classical art, the history of the classical tradition and the iconography of religious art in the period from the Middle Ages up to the 16th century.

Salvatore Settis is a professor of the Academy dei Lincei, the Brandenburg-Berlin Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy of Belgium, the European Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is President of the Supreme Council of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

Sergei Olegovich Androsov was born in 1948 in Leningrad. He is the author of the books Ivan Nikitin, Artist (1998), Italian Sculpture in the Collection of Peter the Great (1999), Peter the Great - Collector of Venetian Art (1999, in Italian) and Peter the Great and the Sculpture of Italy (2004), as well as of three monographs (on the works of Donatello, Verrochio and on the Russian clients of Italian artists in the 18th Century). He is the author of more than 250 publications in Russian and foreign languages, including articles printed in various magazines and in the catalogues for temporary exhibitions. He is the editor of a travel guide to St Petersburg in Italian (2002).

Androsov has presented reports at scholarly conferences in Petersburg and Moscow, as well as in Italy, the USA, France, England, Switzerland, Poland and Slovenia. He has lectured in Italy, the USA and the Federal Republic of Germany.

Androsov is a major specialist on the history of Italian sculpture of the 15th - 18th centuries. He is responsible for many attibutions of monuments of sculpture in the Hermitage and in other museums around Russia.

Androsov was one of the organizers and editors of four exhibitions abroad (in Italy, the USA, and Switzerland) and of one exhibition in the Hermitage ("The Founder of Petersburg" - dedicated to Peter the Great, in which he curated the section relating to the tsar's activity as art collector). He helped prepare 10 exhibitions which were organized in Italy with the participation of the State Hermitage.

At present Androsov is a member of the Academic Council in the Hermitage and in the Academy's Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He is a full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and a foreign member of three Academies in Italy (Ateneo Veneto in Venice, Academia Aruntica and the Academy of Arts in Carrara). Androsov holds the degree of doctor of art history.

Commemorative tablet