On 28 May 2021 the Reserve Gallery of 17th- and 18th-Century European Painting from the stocks of the State Hermitage Museum opens on the top floor (Floor 3) of the Winter Palace. The new display, which extends over nineteen halls, contains more than 200 works by European artists.
The transfer of the collection of 19th- and 20th-century European fine art to the General Staff building significantly enlarged the Hermitage’s display areas, and now it has become possible to present far more broadly the works of 17th- and 18th-century artists, the majority of which were previously kept in the museum’s storerooms. And while the museum’s main displays are chiefly arranged along geographical and chronological lines, the new reserve or supplementary gallery offers a completely different principle for arranging the material. Some of its halls are devoted to specific countries while others present pictures grouped by subject matter – portraits, landscapes, still lifes, genre scenes – that were painted at roughly the same time in various European countries.
The history of the creation of one of the world’s greatest treasure houses of works of art and cultural artefacts – the State Hermitage – and the ways that its collections formed are similar to the corresponding process that took place in many European countries. Some works were already brought to Russia in the time of Peter the Great, including the first Rembrandt – David and Jonathan Parting. Acquisition of works of art became especially intensive in the second half of the 18th century. In the reign of the Hermitage’s founder, Catherine II (1729–1796), who in 1764 obtained the merchant Gotzkowsky’s collection of paintings, both individual pictures and whole collections found their way to Saint Petersburg. Thanks to the Empress’s own talent, the advice and agency of Russian and foreign experts, in a very short time a first-rate art collection came into being that was on a par with the finest galleries in Europe – not only for the quantity, but also for the quality of the works. Catherine II’s policy regarding art was continued by her descendants, above all by her two grandsons, Alexander I and Nicholas I. The painted and sculptural portraits of Catherine the Great, Nicholas I, Peter the Great and Alexander I included in the display are intended to emphasize the significant role that those rulers played in the formation of one of the world’s richest art collections (Hall 314).
It is suggested that visitors begin their acquaintance with the display by viewing Hall 332, which contains pictures by members of the Roman, Flemish and French schools of painting whose work was strongly influenced by the artistic language of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), the founder of the tendency known as Caravaggism. The characteristic placement of half-figures advanced into the foreground and powerful contrasts of nocturnal or artificial illumination, producing dramatic shadows that heighten the theatrical effect of the scene, are the main features of the new type of painting that the Caravaggisti produced. The works on display include Bacchus (circle of Caravaggio), Mary Magdalene at the Tomb of the Risen Christ (Antiveduto Grammatica), Saint Jerome (Hendrick de Somer) and Fortune Telling (Jan Cossiers).
The hall of “Rubens and the Northern Baroque” (Hall 331) presents two paintings by the head of the Flemish school of painting, Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) – a Descent from the Cross and The Apotheosis of King James – as well as pictures produced in his studio: The Apostle Paul, a Virgin and Child and others. Here too visitors can see a Lamentation by Jacob Jordaens, one of the foremost artists of the 17th-century Flemish Baroque, and pictures by other members of the Flemish school from that era: David Teniers the Elder’s Miracle of St Paul on the Island of Malta, Theodor van Thulden’s Allegory of Time Revealing Truth, and more.
On show in the adjoining hall (Hall 330) is a masterpiece by the Dutch painter, outstanding engraver and draughtsman Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617) – a huge drawing on canvas entitled Bacchus, Venus and Ceres. This is the product of a deep rethinking of the frescoes that Raphael created at the Villa Farnesina in Rome. Goltzius based his work on the celebrated group of the Three Graces and Cupid together with the motifs of garlands and hovering putti that appear alongside it in the mural. The same hall contains The Raising of Lazarus by Paolo Veronese and two monochrome works by Raphael’s pupil Polidoro da Caravaggio – Cupid and Psyche and Psyche and Her Sisters.
A whole series of splendid works represents the European landscape, a genre that became common in 17th-century art, especially in Flanders and Holland. Paintings by artists belonging to those schools, many of whom worked in Italy, can be viewed in Halls 323 and 322.
Hall 321 is devoted to genre paintings, depictions of scenes from everyday life that became popular in the countries of Northern Europe. They include little genre scenes by Jan Steen (1625/26–1679) and Johannes Lingelbach (1622–1674), as well as some by Spanish painters.
The works in the still life genre included in the display (Halls 320 and 319) provide a vivid impression of its distinctive nature and main features, demonstrate the diversity of themes and motifs that characterizes the old European still life. The largest number of pictures are by artists of the Dutch and Flemish schools. They include an elegant composition by the Dutch Golden Age artist Willem van Aelst (1625/26 – ca. 1683), a still life by Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601–1678, Flanders) and a trompe-l’oeil piece by Sebastiaen Bonnecroy (1618–1676, Flanders). There are also still lifes and compositional scenes by the Italian artists Francesco Maltese (ca. 1611–1654), Giacomo Francesco Cipper (1664–1736) and others.
Hall 318 brings together artists of the Italian school and chronologically parallels the hall of Caravaggisti (Hall 332). The works displayed here include a Madonna in Glory (Immaculate Conception) by Domenico Fetti, Saint Francis by Cigoli (Lodovico Cardi) and The Rape of Europa by Guido Reni.
The next hall (Hall 317) presents portraits painted in various European countries during the 17th century – from striking images produced in Rubens’s studio to modest, small-sized portraits belonging to the Spanish school.
Hall 316 is given over to works by artists of the 17th-century German school. many of which were painted outside of Germany, notably in Italy. Outstanding among them are pictures on subjects from Ancient Roman history by one of Germany’s most gifted artists, Johann Heinrich Schönfeld. Another artist of German birth spent his whole adult life in Italy and has gone down in the history of art under the name Rosa da Tivoli. He specialized in the depiction of animals, as is demonstrated by his painting Deer Hunting.
Hall 343 presents paintings by 17th-century Italian artists: Niccolo Renieri’s Apollo, Sassoferrato’s Madonna and Child, Padovanino’s Graces and Cupids, Sebastiano Ricci’s Venus, Mars and Cupid, Giovanni Antonio Fumiani’s Triumph of Judith and others.
Paintings by the celebrated Neapolitan artist Luca Giordano (1634–1795), including the Triumph of Galatea, Rape Europa and Judgement of Paris that once adorned the ceiling in the Foyer of the Hermitage Theatre, are displayed in Hall 344. Visitors’ eyes will also be caught by two works in this hall by Giovanni Battista Pittoni (1687–1767), a leading representative of the Venetian school in the era of the Italian Baroque – Dido at the Founding of Carthage and The Death of King Candaulus.
Hall 345 presents large-format portraits, pictures on historical subjects, depictions of fêtes galantes and still lifes, the majority of them painted by 18th-century French artists. Particularly outstanding here is a Portrait of Catherine the Great made by Pierre-Etienne Falconet, the son of the famous sculptor. Visitors’ attention will be drawn to a Portrait of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, the first British prime minister, by the French painter Jean-Baptiste Vanloo. It is the only family portrait sent to Russia together with Walpole’s celebrated art collection after it was bought by Catherine the Great. Here too one can find two fêtes galantes by Nicolas Lancret – Concert in the Park and Company in the Park, Jean Laurent Mosnier’s Self-Portrait with His Daughters and a Portrait of Countess Ekaterina Samoilova with Her Children by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.
Hall 346 is given over to portraits and self-portraits of artists, including Anton Raphael Mengs, Angelica Kauffman and Jürgen Ovens. In the depths of the hall is a formal Portrait of Johann Melchior Dinglinger, an outstanding jeweller and sculptor based in Dresden, the court jeweller to Elector Augustus II the Strong of Saxony, and a Portrait of Maria Susanna Dinglinger, both painted by Antoine Pesne.
The 18th-century formal portrait genre is represented in all its splendour by likenesses of monarchs in Hall 347, the majority of which come from the Chesme Palace in Saint Petersburg, where a gallery of pictures of ruling European monarchs and their heirs was created in the 1770s. The display includes works by the Portuguese court painter Miguel António do Amaral – a Portrait of José I, King of Portugal, a Portrait of Mariana Victoria, Queen of Portugal and others. Also hanging here are a Portrait of Prince Frederick, Regent of Denmark and Norway by Vigilius Ericksen and a Portrait of Fredrick II made by Antoine Pesne, who was invited from Paris to work at the Prussian court.
Works by exponents of the Neo-Classical style that became dominant in art in the second half of the 18th century, taking inspiration from the art and architecture of Classical Antiquity, can be seen in Hall 348. The display here includes two allegorical pictures, Voluptuousness and Mercury Crowning Philosophy, by the Italian painter Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, works by Anton Raphael Mengs – an Annunciation, Perseus and Andromeda and John the Baptist in the Desert, and by Angelica Kauffman – Hector Challenging Paris to Battle and Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia, as well as Pietro Antonio Novelli’s Venus Persuading Helen to Love Paris and Joseph Marie Vien’s Mars and Venus.
Hall 349 is devoted to the 18th-century landscape, with a special place going to works by one of the greatest exponents of the genre in that period, Hubert Robert, famed for his “landscapes with ruins” – Colosseum, Architectural Landscape with a Canal, Ruins of a Doric Temple and Cypresses. Also on show here are paintings by Jakob Philipp Hackert (1737–1807), including The Great Cascades at Tivoli and its companion piece Villa of Maecenas and the Waterfalls at Tivoli, and by Claude-Joseph Vernet – Ancient Port of Ancona and others.
The display ends with Hall 350 that presents a series of works by an outstanding master of the veduta (topographical landscape), Bernardo Belotto (1720–1780), produced by the artist in the 1740s to a commission from Count Heinrich von Brühl. The ten pictures in the series – views of Dresden and nearby Pirna – are now in the Hermitage. Eight of them can now be seen on the top floor of the Winter Palace, while two are displayed in the Large Italian Skylight Hall of the New Hermitage.
The display has been prepared by the State Hermitage’s Department of Western European Fine Art. Its curator is Sergei Olegovich Androsov, Doctor of Art Studies, head of the Department.
The Reserve Gallery of 17th- and 18th-Century European Painting from the stocks of the State Hermitage Museum on the top floor of the Winter Palace can be visited during the museum’s opening hours by holders of entry tickets to the Main Museum Complex for Fixed Route No 1 (entry by the Jordan Staircase) and Fixed Route No 2 (entry by the Church Staircase).
