Origins: Catherine's collection Catherine the Great started her art collection in 1764 by purchasing paintings from
Berlin merchant
Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. He assembled the collection for
Frederick II of Prussia, who ultimately refused to purchase it after losing the Seven Year's War. Thus, Gotzkowsky provided 225 or 317 paintings (conflicting accounts list both numbers), mainly Flemish and Dutch, as well as others, including 90 not precisely identified, to the Russian crown. The collection consisted of
Rembrandt (13 paintings),
Rubens (11 paintings),
Jacob Jordaens (7 paintings),
Anthony van Dyck (5 paintings),
Paolo Veronese (5 paintings),
Frans Hals (3 paintings, including
Portrait of a Young Man with a Glove),
Raphael (2 paintings),
Holbein (2 paintings),
Titian (1 painting),
Jan Steen (
The Idlers),
Hendrik Goltzius,
Dirck van Baburen,
Hendrick van Balen and
Gerrit van Honthorst. Perhaps some of the most famous and notable artworks that were a part of Catherine's original purchase from Gotzkowsky were
Danaë, painted by Rembrandt in 1636;
Descent from the Cross, painted by Rembrandt in 1624; and
Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove, painted by Frans Hals in 1650. These paintings remain in the Hermitage collection today. In 1764, Catherine commissioned
Yury Felten to build an extension on the east of the
Winter Palace which he completed in 1766. Later it became the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. From 1767 to 1769, French architect
Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe built the Northern Pavilion on the Neva embankment. Between 1767 and 1775, the extensions were connected by galleries, where Catherine put her collections. The entire neoclassical building is now known as the Small Hermitage. During the time of Catherine, the Hermitage was not a public museum and few people were allowed to view its holdings.
Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe also rebuilt rooms in the second story of the south-east corner block that was originally built for
Elizabeth and later occupied by
Peter III. The largest room in this particular apartment was the Audience Chamber (also called the Throne Hall) which consisted of 227 square meters. Catherine acquired the best collections offered for sale by the heirs of prominent collectors. In 1769, she purchased
Heinrich von Brühl's collection, consisting of over 600 paintings and a vast number of prints and drawings, in
Saxony. Three years later, she bought
Pierre Crozat's collection of paintings in France with the assistance of
Denis Diderot. Next, in 1779, she acquired
the collection of 198 paintings that once belonged to
Robert Walpole in London followed by a collection of 119 paintings in Paris from Count Baudouin in 1781. Catherine's favorite items to collect were believed to be engraved gems and cameos. At the inaugural exhibit of the Hermitage, opened by
Charles, Prince of Wales in November 2000, there was an entire gallery devoted to representing and displaying Catherine's favorite items. In this gallery her cameos are displayed along with cabinet made by David Roentgen, which holds her engraved gems. As the symbol of Minerva was frequently used and favored by Catherine to represent her patronage of the arts, a cameo of Catherine as Minerva is also displayed here. This particular cameo was created for her by her daughter-in-law, the Grand Duchess
Maria Fyodorovna. This is only a small representation of Catherine's vast collection of many antique and contemporary engraved gems and cameos. The collection soon overgrew the building. In her lifetime, Catherine acquired 4,000 paintings from the old masters, 38,000 books, 10,000 engraved gems, 10,000 drawings, 16,000 coins and medals, and a natural history collection filling two galleries, so in 1771 she commissioned Yury Felten to build another major extension. The neoclassical building was completed in 1787 and has come to be known as the Large Hermitage or Old Hermitage. Catherine also gave the name of the Hermitage to
her private theatre, built nearby between 1783 and 1787 by the Italian architect
Giacomo Quarenghi. In London in 1787, Catherine acquired the collection of sculpture that belonged to
Lyde Browne, mostly Ancient Roman marbles. Catherine used them to adorn the
Catherine Palace and park in
Tsarskoye Selo, but later they became the core of the Classical Antiquities collection of the Hermitage. From 1787 to 1792, Quarenghi designed and built a wing along the
Winter Canal with the Raphael Loggias to replicate the loggia in the
Apostolic Palace in Rome designed by
Donato Bramante and frescoed by Raphael. Catherine's collection of at least 4,000 paintings came to rival the older and more prestigious museums of Western Europe. Catherine took great pride in her collection and actively participated in extensive competitive art gathering and collecting that was prevalent in European royal court culture. Through her art collection she gained European acknowledgment and acceptance and portrayed Russia as an enlightened society. Catherine went on to invest much of her identity in being a patron of the arts. She was particularly fond of the Roman deity Minerva, whose characteristics according to classical tradition are military prowess, wisdom, and patronage of the arts. Using the title Catherine the Minerva, she created new institutions of literature and culture and also participated in many projects of her own, mostly play writing. The representation of Catherine alongside Minerva would come to be a tradition of enlightened patronage in Russia.
Expansion in the 19th century In 1815,
Alexander I of Russia purchased 38 pictures from the heirs of
Joséphine de Beauharnais, most of which had been looted by the French in
Kassel during the war. The Hermitage collection of Rembrandts was then considered the largest in the world. Also among Alexander's purchases from Josephine's estate were the first four sculptures by the neoclassical Italian sculptor Antonio Canova to enter the Hermitage collection. Between 1840 and 1843, Vasily Stasov redesigned the interiors of the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. In 1838,
Nicholas I commissioned the neoclassical German architect
Leo von Klenze to design a building for the public museum. Space for the museum was made next to the Small Hermitage by the demolition of the Shepelev Palace and royal stables. The construction was overseen by the Russian architects
Vasily Stasov and Nikolai Yefimov from 1842 to 1851 and incorporated Quarenghi's wing with the Raphael Loggias. The New Hermitage was opened to the public on 5 February 1852. In the same year the
Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum emerged and was particularly enriched by items given by the
Duke of Leuchtenberg, Nicholas I's son-in-law. Meanwhile, from 1851 to 1860, the interiors of the Old Hermitage were redesigned by
Andrei Stackensneider to accommodate the State Assembly, Cabinet of Ministers and state apartments. Stakenschneider created the Pavilion Hall in the Northern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage from 1851 to 1858. With the
German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, before the
Siege of Leningrad started, two trains with a considerable part of the collections were evacuated to
Sverdlovsk. Two bombs and a number of shells hit the museum buildings during the siege. The museum opened an exhibition in November 1944. In October 1945 the evacuated collections were brought back, and in November 1945 the museum reopened. In 1948, 316 works of
Impressionist,
post-Impressionist, and
modern art from the collection of the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow, originating mostly from the nationalized collections of
Sergei Shchukin and
Ivan Morozov before the war, were transferred to the Hermitage, including works by
Matisse and
Picasso. On 15 June 1985, a man later judged insane attacked Rembrandt's painting
Danaë, displayed in the museum. He threw
sulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with a knife. The restoration of the painting had been accomplished by Hermitage conservationists by 1997, and
Danaë is now on display behind armoured glass.
The Hermitage since 1991 In 1991, it became known that some paintings looted by the
Red Army in Germany in 1945 were held in the Hermitage. But only in October 1994 did the Hermitage officially announce that it had secretly been holding a major trove of French
Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist paintings from German private collections. The exhibition
Hidden Treasures Revealed, in which 74 of the paintings were displayed for the first time, was opened on 30 March 1995 in the
Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace and lasted a year. Of the paintings, all but one originated from private rather than state German collections, including 56 paintings from the
Otto Krebs collection, as well as the collection of
Bernhard Koehler and paintings previously belonging to
Otto Gerstenberg and his daughter Margarete Scharf, including the world-famous
Place de la Concorde by
Degas,
In the Garden by
Renoir, and
White House at Night by
Van Gogh. Some of the paintings are now on permanent display in several small rooms in the northeastern corner of the Winter Palace on the first floor. In 1993, the Russian government gave the eastern wing of the nearby
General Staff Building across the Palace Square to the Hermitage and the new exhibition rooms in 1999. Since 2003, the
Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace has been open to the public. In 2003, the Hermitage loaned 142 pieces to the
University of Michigan Museum of Art for an exhibition titled
The Romanovs Collect: European Art from the Hermitage. In December 2004, the museum discovered another looted work of art:
Venus Disarming Mars by
Rubens was once in the collection of the
Rheinsberg Palace near Berlin, and was apparently looted by Soviet troops from the
Königsberg Castle in East Prussia in 1945. At the time, Mikhail Piotrovsky said the painting would be cleaned and displayed. The museum announced in July 2006 that 221 minor items, including jewelry, Orthodox icons, silverware and richly enameled objects, had been stolen. The value of the stolen items was estimated to be approximately $543,000. By the end of 2006 several of the stolen items had been recovered. In March 2020, Apple released a continuous 5 hour and 19 minute one shot film recorded entirely on an iPhone 11 Pro detailing many rooms of the museum which highlighted not only the artwork, but also the architecture, and live movement pieces interspersed throughout. ==Dependencies==