The Hermitage: Western European Art: Painting Drawings: Sculptures

📙 The early history of the Department of Western European Art may be said to resemble, in some respect that of St. Petersburg — Leningrad itself. Just as the new Russian capital, founded on the barren, swamp banks of the Neva, came, in a mere two and a half decades, to rival Europe's ancient capitals in its luxury an splendour, so the collection of works of Western European art, which was started in 1764—the date traditional regarded as the year of the Hermitage's foundation,—needed only twenty-five years to attain that wealth ar variety which placed it on a par with the most celebrated European collections. Isolated specimens of Western European art had of course found their way into Russia during the precedir periods, especially during the reign of Peter the Great, but consistent and purposeful collecting began on in the second half of the eighteenth century. The earliest acquisitions made by Catherine II were intend* for the decoration of the sumptuous apartments of her huge new Winter Palace. Shortly afterwards, howeve the palace collection outgrew its original decorative function and turned into a veritable art museum, tl nucleus of the future Hermitage. The growth of this Museum was indeed astonishingly rapid. Its very first printed catalogue, issued ten yea after the beginnings of the collection were laid, listed 2,080 paintings, while by the end of another decade, t picture gallery already contained 2,568 canvases. These works formed, not a random assemblage of К...