The Second Room of Most Recent Sculpture

In 1849, before the walls were fully constructed, an immense vase was installed in the vestibule adjoining the western facade of the New Hermitage. The vase had been cut from Revnevskaya jasper at the Kolyvan Lapidary Works in 1829-43. Besides the "Regina Vasorum" there was room here only for relatively small bronze sculptures, such as Boy Blowing a Horn, attributed to Pietro Tacca, a sculptor from Carrara, and busts of the Farnese Hercules and Antinous in the guise of Bacchus. The white Carrara marble columns, brought here from the St George Hall of the Mikhailovsky (Engineers') Castle, are well set off by the pink background of the marble walls. The vault, with a half-oval cross-section, is decorated with relief ornament, while six medallions bearing portraits of Russian sculptors (among them Klodt, Vitali, Pimenov and Orlovsky) indicate that this room was originally intended to house modern Russian sculpture too.

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