Exhibition Wars of Louis XIV from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Veliky Novgorod

In November and December of 2001, according to a cooperation agreement between the Hermitage and the Novgorod Museum, the Hermitage personnel had a number of tours to Novgorod.
Two important events took place on 27 December, 2001, in Veliky Novgorod.
The State Hermitage Museum presented to the Novgorod Museum the collection of theological treatises Skrizhal of the middle of the 17th century purchased by the Hermitage for its library from a private owner in November, 2001. Specialists of the Hermitage Library examined the book and found notes and stamps showing that Skrizhal was stolen from the Novgorod Museum during the German occupation. The book is a collection of Greek and Russian theological treatises intended to explain and validate the church reforms undertaken by the Patriarch Nikon (1605-1681).
On the same day in Veliky Novgorod's Museum of Fine Arts was opened the exhibition Wars of Louis XIV. The exhibition from the State Hermitage Museum's collection includes 45 engravings and 5 watercolor and gouache drawings of various sizes by a few artists from the middle of the 17th century to the early 18th century. Their common subject is victories and defeats of Louis XIV. The exhibition introduces events from the middle of the 17th century to 1715, the year of death of Louis XIV, the greatest European sovereign, during whose reign France was the leading European power.
The exhibition is hosted by the Novgorod Museum which has in its charge all the city's monuments of history and art. The Museum possesses a unique collection of archeological artifacts, objects of applied art, ancient books, written sources and icons of the 12th-17th centuries.
The Hermitage prepared and published an illustrated catalogue for the exhibition. The introduction is written by the exhibition's curator Lyubov T. Isachenko.

More

Skrizhal
Larger view

Press conference

Opening of the exhibition

Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, and Mikhail M. Prusak, Governor of the Novgorod Region, visiting the exhibition