The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT
The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT
The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT
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temporary exhIbItIons<br />
a glaSS fanTaSy. ancienT<br />
glaSS from <strong>The</strong> <strong>hermiTage</strong><br />
collecTion<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are several reasons for being amazed<br />
and excited by the exhibition. First of all, there<br />
is the great age of the glass artifacts, some of<br />
which have survived from the time before the<br />
birth of Christ! According to everyday logic,<br />
they were bound to shatter at some point<br />
during so many years. But in some mysterious<br />
way they have managed to come down<br />
to us. Secondly, one is spellbound by the exquisite<br />
beauty, variety and intricacy of the<br />
craftsmanship. We recognize glasses, cups,<br />
amphorae, jugs, flagons. But at the exhibition<br />
we learn about the existence of amphoriskoi,<br />
askoi, aryballoi, alabasters, phalerae, pyxides,<br />
and many others.<br />
Yelena Druzhinina, “<strong>The</strong> Glass Fantasy<br />
of an Incredible Age”, Intellektualny<br />
Kapital, 13 October 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> craftsmen have learned to create objects<br />
out of the most delicate glass, so that it has<br />
hardly any weight in the hand, and also to colour<br />
them with pure and deep colours using<br />
various metal oxides. Sometimes the glass<br />
blowers played on the contrast between the<br />
transparent background and the image applied<br />
by means of opaque enamel pigments.<br />
A splendid example from the exhibition is<br />
a bright green amphora with a painted floral<br />
ornament of vine and ivy shoots and leaves<br />
with birds nesting in them.<br />
ARTinvestment.ru, “A Glass Fantasy.<br />
Ancient Glass from the Hermitage<br />
Collection”, 27 October 2010<br />
flemingS Through <strong>The</strong> eyeS<br />
of david TenierS <strong>The</strong> younger<br />
When I was a child, I loved looking at one of<br />
Teniers’ paintings, Monkeys in the Kitchen.<br />
Later I learned that the monkeys’ antics were<br />
the artist’s specialty – he portrayed them frolicking<br />
about in the kitchens, barber’s salons,<br />
and pubs.<br />
Although he was happy to accept any commissions<br />
(landscapes, portraits, mythological<br />
and everyday scenes, hunting scenes),<br />
his favourite subject was the folk revels like<br />
A Peasant Wedding which resides in the Hermitage.<br />
Yelena Bobrova, “Mischievous<br />
Monkeys”, Sankt-Peterburgsky Kurier,<br />
21 October 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> Hermitage possesses 33 paintings from<br />
the artist’s mature period. In his pictures,<br />
peasants dance at a wedding, play bowls<br />
and dice, and have fun in a tavern. He painted<br />
festivals, rural fairs, and sometimes also<br />
scenes of peasant labour – harvesting and<br />
haymaking.<br />
Kultura Sankt-Peterburga, “Flemings<br />
through the Eyes of David Teniers<br />
the Younger”, 18 October 2010<br />
TiTian. madonna and child wiTh<br />
sT. ca<strong>The</strong>Rine (madonna wiTh<br />
a RabbiT). from <strong>The</strong> collecTion<br />
of <strong>The</strong> louvre<br />
An exhibition of a masterpiece by the Venetian<br />
artist Titian Vecellio Madonna and Child<br />
with St. Catherine (Madonna with a Rabbit).<br />
From the Collection of the Louvre has opened<br />
at the Hermitage. This was Louvre’s return<br />
loan in exchange for a painting by Paolo Veronese.<br />
As the Hermitage curators explain,<br />
the painting was chosen deliberately: with<br />
all its seeming simplicity it reflects the ideas<br />
novel for the period, which ultimately led<br />
to the emergence of the landscape as an independent<br />
genre.<br />
Yevgenia Tsinkler, “Titian’s Masterpiece<br />
Madonna with a Rabbit<br />
Has Arrived to the Hermitage from the<br />
Louvre”, Rossiyskaya Gazeta,<br />
28 October 2010<br />
“This is Titian on the brink of his mature period,<br />
– says the curator of the exhibition, the<br />
leading research worker of the Department<br />
of Western European Fine Arts Irina Artemyeva,<br />
– We have here a “farewell” to the style<br />
of Giorgone and the art which used to be the<br />
leitmotif of Venetian art for the first three<br />
decades of the 16th century. Here everything<br />
is concentrated, and the detail is of utmost<br />
importance – this is not going to be typical<br />
for Titian’s later work.”<br />
Alina Tsiopa, “<strong>The</strong> Madonna with<br />
a Rabbit Comes to St. Petersburg”,<br />
Nevskoye Vremya, 28 October 2010<br />
All the details of this expressive scene are<br />
painted with loving meticulousness. <strong>The</strong> apple<br />
and the grapes in the half-open basket<br />
at Mary’s feet, the strawberry leaves and berries,<br />
the outline of a distant church tower. And<br />
these are not here by chance. However the<br />
essence of the painting is not in these details,<br />
but in the overall poetic impression it pro-<br />
duces. <strong>The</strong> art of the master is remarkable –<br />
in one scene, he manages to convey all his<br />
admiration for this world, all his love for life<br />
and a wonderful harmony between man and<br />
surrounding nature. This is in a way a Utopia,<br />
a dream of ideal life in a Universe ordained by<br />
God in a perfect way. But this dream is so realistic<br />
and convincing that it is easy to believe<br />
that it can come true.<br />
Yekaterina Emme, “Madonna<br />
with a Rabbit”, InfoSkop,<br />
October 2010<br />
a romanTic view. duTch<br />
and Belgian painTingS<br />
of <strong>The</strong> 19Th cenTury from<br />
<strong>The</strong> rademaKerS collecTion<br />
<strong>The</strong> start of each century marks a certain<br />
change in aesthetic taste. In our time<br />
this is evident, among other things, in the<br />
growing interest in nineteenth-century art,<br />
which is not limited to textbook Romanticism,<br />
Realism, and Impressionism. This is<br />
why the Hermitage presents the artists littleknown<br />
in Russia today, although 150 years<br />
ago paintings by Verboeckhoven, Willems,<br />
Jenisson, Koekkoek, Meyer, Schelfhaut<br />
would be an expected attribute of any important<br />
private collection.<br />
Yelena Druzhinina, “<strong>The</strong>re will Always<br />
be Romantics”, Intellektualny Kapital,<br />
30 October 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> visitors to the museum will see 70 works<br />
of art from the largest private collection<br />
of Dutch and Flemish paintings in Europe.<br />
At present, it includes over a hundred prominent<br />
Romantic paintings. <strong>The</strong> exhibition will<br />
include nearly all the topics which were of interest<br />
for Romantic artists: summer and winter<br />
landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, stilllifes,<br />
portraits, and genre scenes.<br />
Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti,<br />
“A Romantic View”, October 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> hoard of mrS. liKhachyova<br />
<strong>The</strong> exhibition represents extremely rare<br />
historic and household items made of silver,<br />
which had belonged to a rich St. Petersburg<br />
family before the Revolution. All of them<br />
were acquired together. In 1978, a hoard of<br />
around two hundred pieces was discovered<br />
at the Voskhod shoe factory, which is located<br />
in No 52, 3rd Line, Vasilievsky Island, which<br />
had housed the Nevskaya Wallpaper Factory<br />
since the start of the 20th century. Some<br />
of them bore presentation inscriptions addressed<br />
to Maria Likhachyova, the owner of<br />
the shoe factory, marking memorable and<br />
festive occasions.<br />
Andrei Yerofeyev, “<strong>The</strong> Likhachyova<br />
Hoard at the Hermitage”,<br />
Parlamentskaya Gazeta,<br />
10 December 2010<br />
Commemorative dishes and cups, frames and<br />
stands for crystal vases, teapots, milk jugs,<br />
sugar basins, tableware, cups, and salt cellars<br />
made of silver by the Russian craftsmen<br />
of the second half of the 19th – early 20th<br />
centuries in different techniques reflect a variety<br />
of forms and decorations. <strong>The</strong> most numerous<br />
group of items are those made in the<br />
so-called Russian style. <strong>The</strong> earliest of them,<br />
a salt cellar shaped like a washtub, is a rare<br />
example of the interpretation of a traditional<br />
theme in the applied art of the first quarter<br />
of the 19th century.<br />
Tea.ru, “An Exhibition of Old Teapots<br />
Opens at the Winter Palace”,<br />
14 December 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> roman Two-headed eagle.<br />
from <strong>The</strong> archaeological <strong>muSeum</strong><br />
aT alicanTe, Spain<br />
An exhibition of one item – a Roman twoheaded<br />
eagle – is opening at the State Hermitage<br />
on St. George’s Day. This exhibit is a<br />
unique fragment of a bronze sculpture found<br />
during the excavations of the Roman town of<br />
Lucentum in 2005. <strong>The</strong> statue’s ring finger<br />
bears a ring with an image of a staff which<br />
was used by Roman augurs as a sign of belonging<br />
to the priestly rank.<br />
Interfax–Severo-Zapad, “A Handle<br />
of a Roman Sword with a Two-Headed<br />
Eagle will be on Display at the Hermitage”,<br />
St. Petersburg, 9 December 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> State Hermitage is displaying one of the<br />
first images of a two-headed eagle in history.<br />
<strong>The</strong> bronze hand holding a sword is a fragment<br />
of a statue found during of the excavations<br />
of the ancient city of Lucentum on the<br />
shores of the Mediterranean. It is the only<br />
item displayed at the exhibition <strong>The</strong> Roman<br />
Two-Headed Eagle, organized jointly with the<br />
Spanish Archaeological Museum in Alicante.<br />
<strong>The</strong> important Roman citizen portrayed in<br />
bronze was holding a special sword in his left<br />
hand – an attribute of military leaders and an-<br />
cient heroes. <strong>The</strong> pommel of this weapon was<br />
decorated with the image of the two-headed<br />
eagle, which had never before been seen in<br />
the art of Ancient Greece or Rome.<br />
ITAR-TASS, “One of the First Images<br />
of the Two-Headed Eagle is on Display<br />
at the Hermitage to Mark St. George’s<br />
Day”, Moscow, 9 December 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> glaSS Bead caBineT.<br />
panelS from <strong>The</strong> chineSe palace<br />
aT oranienBaum<br />
<strong>The</strong> Hermitage is ready to introduce the public<br />
to a unique inter-museum project – the restored<br />
Glass Bead Cabinet from the Chinese<br />
Palace at Oranienbaum.<br />
This masterpiece of applied art has had<br />
a rather troubled history. It has long been<br />
known that it was in need of a complex and<br />
expensive restoration procedure. <strong>The</strong> unique<br />
job of saving the unique panels was entrusted<br />
to the experts from the Hermitage Laboratory<br />
for Scientific Restoration of Textiles.<br />
<strong>The</strong> outstanding work of the Hermitage experts<br />
was highly praised by their colleagues.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Glass Bead Cabinet. Panels from the Chinese<br />
Palace at Oranienbaum was awarded<br />
a special Sautov Restoration Prize in the category<br />
“Best Restoration Project” of the “Museum<br />
Olympus” award presented this year.<br />
Ludmila Leusskaya, “Glass Beads<br />
on Olympus”, Sankt-Peterburgskie<br />
Vedomosti, 7 December 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> floor-to-ceiling panels, richly embroidered<br />
with glass beads, bring about a surge<br />
of respect for manual labour. Twelve glass<br />
bead panels, 3.5 m by 1.5 m each, used by<br />
Catherine the Great to knock dead her worldweary<br />
guests in a state drawing room, will be<br />
displayed like paintings. In the 18th century,<br />
the connoisseurs of the chinoiserie style<br />
thought that the Imperial “wallpaper” was the<br />
last word in sumptuous interior design, while<br />
the modern viewer will be reminded of fairytales<br />
and the wonders of the East when looking<br />
at these luminous glass panels.<br />
Time Out Peterburg,<br />
“<strong>The</strong> Glass Bead Cabinet from<br />
the Chinese Palace at Oranienbaum”,<br />
26 November – 9 December 2010<br />
temporary exhIbItIons<br />
porcelain and roSeS.<br />
from <strong>The</strong> “chriSTmaS gifT”<br />
SerieS<br />
<strong>The</strong> first dinner service of Empress Elizabeth,<br />
the wedding dishes used by the daughters<br />
of Paul I, Soviet and contemporary porcelain.<br />
What brings them all together is that most romantic<br />
of all flowers, the rose.<br />
<strong>The</strong> organizers of the exhibition have selected<br />
unique rather than mass-produced objects.<br />
<strong>The</strong> exhibition has no pieces with printed designs.<br />
<strong>The</strong> oldest and most valuable object<br />
in the collection is a snuffbox with a picture<br />
of playing pugs.<br />
Vesti.Ru, “Porcelain and Roses:<br />
the Most Romantic Exhibition<br />
at the Winter Palace”, 22 December 2010<br />
<strong>The</strong> Imperial Porcelain Factory used roses<br />
to decorate the pieces made for Empress Elizabeth.<br />
Garlands of moulded roses could be<br />
seen on the very first “Personal” Service, they<br />
bloomed in the painting of the gilded tea service<br />
made during the life of the founding father<br />
of Russian porcelain, Dmitry Vinogradov.<br />
In Catherine’s age, roses were put on everyday<br />
services, they were woven into monogrammes<br />
and designs on teacups, vases, and<br />
other presentation pieces.<br />
Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti,<br />
“Roses on Porcelain”,<br />
24 December 2010<br />
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