Alluring Hermitage of St Petersburg

I visited Russia in the August of 2018 and of the 3 days spent at St. Petersburg, the most intriguing and fascinating was the day spent at the Hermitage Museum or the Winter Palace. The Hermitage Museum is really huge and in reality a collection of museums considering the way it was built with new sections added over the centuries to accommodate a ginormous collection of over three million pieces of art and artifacts. Only a private tour through the beautiful hallways and passages can do justice to the collections as there are teeming crowds of tourists on any average day, making it difficult to catch its many nuances. We also noticed that crowds of certain nationalities fascinated with certain exhibits spending an inordinate amount of time explaining and intensely observing those exhibits in particular which seemed to be a "cultural thing".

200 Years As a Private Collection in a Private Residence

The main structure of the Hermitage with its beautiful baroque facade was designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli and built in 1762 under Empress Elizabeth. For the next 200 years, the two hundred meter Palace served as a winter residence for the Tsars from Peter III, followed by his wife Catherine the Great and then Tsar Nicholas I. In 1771, Catherine the Great ordered the addition of "The Great Hermitage" to the already vast residence and in 1852, Tsar Nicholas I added another building with a colonnaded entrance before inaugurating the Palace's vast collection as a museum. His wife Alexandra commissioned the famed Malachite Room that was later the meeting place for Kerensky's Provisional Government. It eventually became a state museum, post the 1917 revolution.

One Man's Legacy But Many Others Obsession

As the museum's director once remarked, the Hermitage is an ‘encyclopaedic’ museum featuring a mix of art and culture from all over the world. The collection today is a gradual accumulation over a 300 year period, initially by the Russian Tsars for their private enjoyment. Peter the Great, acquired pictures and artefacts between 1682 and 1725 while scouring Europe for ideas to make St Petersburg as one of the greatest cities in the world. This was greatly added to by Catherine the Great in the 18th century with a large acquisition of Renaissance paintings. Other key contributors to the Impressionist and Modern collections were the Russian art patrons Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin who contributed their personal collections to the Museum just before the First World War. There was some erosion of the collection during the Soviet regime as some key works were sold.

Navigating 400 Rooms, 3 Floors and 5 Buildings

Many consider the Hermitage as one of the most confusing museums, as it has 400 rooms across three floors and in five buildings interlinked by bridges and passageways. The museum also houses numerous offices and some rooms have been closed for renovation, often making the long corridors difficult to navigate and follow some sort of pattern to seeing the collections. We visited floor by floor, first covering the European painting collections on the first and second floors before going through the antiquities and collection of large artifacts on the ground floor.

Name Dropping The Geniuses

Amongst the famed art pieces to look for are Van Goghs, Rembrandts, Matisses and the Jordan Staircase. But equally interesting is the one of a kind collection of Scythian gold from the 7th Century BC and Italian Renaissance Period works of Titian, Leonardo, Giorgione and Michelangelo (especially the unfinished sculpture of the crouching boy). The English collection includes Gainsboroughs (Woman in Blue), Reynolds and Walpoles, while the Dutch collections include Rembrandts, Van Dycks, Van Goghs and Hals'. Picasso’s Blue Period paintings also attract a crowd as do the Hermitage's rich collection of French Impressionist, post-Impressionist and modernist paintings including that of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Gauguin and Bonnard apart from its famed Matisses.

Instagram Moments

There are numerous halls that are eminently instagrammable - the Gala Staircase (covered with red velvet carpet), the Raphael Loggias, the Pavilion Hall, the Malachite Room, the Red Rooms (Italian Fine art) and the Armorial Hall. Some of the most instagrammable structures in the museum include:

• The grandiose Gala Staircase, covered with red velvet carpet and gilded frescoes.

• The St. George’s hall decked in white gold and red besides beautiful wood flooring with inlay.

• The War Gallery of 1812 with its symmetric arrangement of paintings.

• The Statues of Atlantes -the 10 column supporting figures that guard the portico of The New Hermitage.

• Raphael’s seminal masterpiece of Madonna and Child.

• The spectacular gold, crimson and green tones of the Malachite Room.

• The Kolyvan Vase with its 19.2 tonnes of jasper seems a perfect spot to catch the vase.

• The 200 year old Peacock Clock - a piece of automation that still works like a song designed by James Cox.

• Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna Litta and Benois Madonna.

• The Knights Hall with its neo-Greek décor.

• The vaulted ceilings of the Small Throne Room

• The Raphael Loggias on the corridor that are a picture of symmetry and colour.

• The Pavilion Hall embellished in white and gold with its huge collection of crystal chandeliers and the 19th century copy of an ancient Roman Zodiac Calendar mosaic near one of the windows looking to the canals.

• The Hanging Garden commissioned by Catherine linking the Small Hermitage's north and south wings.

• The Large Italian Skylight Hall on the upper floor of the New Hermitage with its golden arabesque moulding.

• Most importantly the 4 facades of the palace from outside taken in different lights to avoid the crowds.

The Hermitage Museum Has Its Secrets

There are many facets of the museum that are relatively unknown to most people :

• Its initial collection (including 13 Rembrandts) were put together by Gotzkowsky, an art dealer for Frederick II, King of Prussia, who rejected the collection that was eventually bought by Catherine the Great.

• Catherine in her obsession to portray Russia as a rich in the arts ended up acquiring another 4,000 paintings (old masters), 10,000 drawings, 38,000 books, 16,000 coins and medals, 10,000 engraved gems, and a rich collection on natural history to fill two galleries.

• The art trove of the museum was moved by train to the Ural mountains for safekeeping during the World War II.

• The Hermitage Museum is home to 50 plus cats who keep the mice at bay. In the past, they would freely roam around the galleries, whereas they are presently confined to the basement or on the museum grounds. The Hermitage cats even have an Instagram account and can be adopted for a fee!

• Peter the Great had fascination for the macabre which is visible in his large "Anatomy Collection".

• Catherine the Great, apparently a lusty queen, used a device in her private chambers to improve her sex life.

• The Hermitage has evidence that the dreaded Rasputin was actually murdered by an Englishman.

• Amongst the most famous paintings of the Hermitage Museum is a small canvas painted completely black that was detested by dictator Joseph Stalin, but is worth a million dollars.