The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

This famous Museum of Art was founded by Catherine II. in 1765. It was first but a small pavilion attached to the Winter Palace where Catherine II. was glad to escape from the duties of court life, and spend some hours in conversation with artists and men of letters, hence called her Ermitaj (Hermitage). Ten years later she added a gallery for the reception of pictures, and in 1780 a Theatre was added; these were all connected by covered ways with the Palace. A green curtain now conceals an interesting tablet, on which may still be read the rules of Catherine II. which she enforced at her Conversazione in the Hermitage:

I. Leave your rank outside, as well as your hat and sword.

II. Leave your right of precedence, your pride, and any similar feeling, outside the door.

III. Be gay, but do not spoil or gnaw anything.

IV. Sit, stand, walk, as you will, without reference to anybody.

V. Talk moderately, not loud, so as not to make the ears or heads of others ache.

VI. Argue without anger, and without excitement.

VII. Neither sigh nor yawn, nor make anyone feel dull or heavy.

VIII. In all innocent games, whatever one proposes, let all join.

IX. Eat whatever is sweet and savory, but drink with moderation, so each may find his legs on leaving the room.

X. Tell no tales out of school; whatever goes in at one ear must go out at the other before leaving the room.

Whoever offends against the Rule X. shall never again be admitted.

The present palatial Hermitage dates from 1840 to 1850, and was erected by order of Emperor Nicholas; Klenze of Munich was the architect. For elegance and purity of style, architecturally, it is the finest building in St. Petersburg, and for beauty and costliness of material this Museum has scarcely an equal in Europe. It is a parallelogram (512 x 375 feet) with two large courts. Statues of celebrated painters and sculptors adorn the niches of the exterior walls. The most ornamental facade, with loggia, is the river front; but the main entrance is on Millionneja Ulitsa (Million Street). The portico is supported by ten colossal Atlantes or Telemones, twenty-two feet high, carved out of Finland granite. Entering the Palace, we find ourselves in a noble hall, the roof of which is supported by sixteen monolithic columns of Finland granite with Carrara capitals.

The ground floor is devoted to a Museum of Antique Sculpture. A marble stairway in three flights leads to the picture galleries. It is no longer a Museum, but an Imperial Palace. The Pitti Gallery, Florence, is small in comparison.

The various rooms are sumptuously decorated with gigantic candelabra, vases, and tables of malachite, porphyry, or jasper, also many splendid specimens of French furniture. Handsome sofas and chairs add to the comfort of visitors. The attendants are handsomely attired in Court livery. Two large collections form the nucleus of the picture galleries, the Crozat collection and the Walpole. The Crozat collection (the name of a celebrated amateur in Paris) had a European reputation before it reached St. Petersburg. Its four hundred pictures were gathered during the last century from fifteen collections in France and Italy. Among the most famous of these is a Holy Family and a St. George by Raphael.

The Walpole Collection was formed by the Ministers of George I. and George II. of England, purchased for St. Petersburg in 1779 for pound 35,000. In 1829 thirty pictures from the collection of Queen Hortense, mother of Napoleon III., were bought for pound 4000. Seventeen hundred pictures were chosen out of four thousand, and arranged in their present order by Waagen of Berlin. The others were distributed among the Palaces.

All schools of art are represented in the Hermitage, and this is the only gallery on the Continent where there is a collection of English pictures. There is a loggia, after the style of a loggia in the Vatican Palace, containing copies of Raphael's celebrated frescoes.

Room V. contains the nine frescoes of Raphael purchased in 1861, also a Madonna and Child, purchased by Alexander II. and presented to his wife on their Silver Wedding Day. Room VII. contains the Holy Family by Raphael, purchased for $31,000. Room IV. contains eighteen Murillos. The gem are "Jacob's Ladder Dream," "Joseph Holding the Child Jesus," "The Angel Delivering St. Peter." Paul Potter is well represented by his "Deer-Hound." But the most interesting room in the Hermitage is the Gallery of Peter the Great. It also forms a part of the Winter Palace. His active, energetic life may be traced here. Every conceivable memorial of him is here preserved. The horse he rode to battle is stuffed and standing; likewise his favorite dogs; specimens of his handiwork; his effigy in the dress of the period; his sword, cane, etc.; a cast taken of his face after death; but, more remarkable, a cast taken in wax during his life, with black hair and a small mustache. It was placed upon a wooden bust and presented to his friend Cardinal Valenti at Rome. An engraving had been taken of it, but the original was supposed to have been lost. Mr. Guedenoff discovered it in Rome and purchased it at a high figure for this Memorial Gallery. The Kerch Collection of Antiquities from the Crimea, the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea, is due to excavations having been made by the Government where Greek colonies existed several hundred years before Christ; the result is a new chapter in history, and a collection of Greek Art, invaluable to Art-students.