This gallery, which acquired its present décor in the 1880s, is hung with portraits of members of the Romanov dynasty - from Peter the Great (1672-1725), the founder of the Russian Empire, to the last emperor, Nicholas II (1868-1918). From the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (1709-1761), who commissioned the construction of the Winter Palace, the life of the imperial family was inseparably linked to the history of the present-day Hermitage buildings. Under Catherine II, mistress of the Winter Palace from 1762, the Small and Large Hermitages and Hermitage Theatre were built. Her grandson, Nicholas I (1796-1855), ordered the construction of the Imperial Museum - the New Hermitage.
