Educated Fancy. The Collection of Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov

On 8 February 2002 one of the largest exhibitions of the year opened in the Hermitage - "Educated Fancy" The Collection of Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov. The exhibition has been organized by the State Hermitage in conjunction with the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the State Arkhangelskoye Estate Museum, both in Moscow.
The display acquaints visitors with one of the largest collections created in Russia of Western European painting and decorative and applied art of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was assembled by Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov (1750/51-1831), a statesman and diplomat, director of the Hermitage and the Armoury Chamber, a connoisseur and patron of art. This is the first documentary reconstruction of the celebrated collection whose make-up reflects the leading stylistic tendencies of the period when it formed and the heyday of European Neo-Classicism and early Romanticism.
The exhibition features over 150 items, including paintings (among them works by Joseph Vernet, Hubert Robert and Philippe Hackert, two celebrities in their time at European courts - Pompeo Batoni and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, the outstanding Old Masters Correggio, Sebastiano Ricci, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Rembrandt, Lorrain and Boucher), graphic art, sculpture, works of graphic and applied art, as well as volumes of the unique 1827-29 catalogue of the Yusupov collection.

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Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky and Ludmila Kiriushina, deputy director of the Arkhangelskoye Estate Museum

In the exhibition