User:TokhabayevaS/Hermitage

The State Hermitage Museum (until 1917, the Imperial Hermitage Museum) is a museum of fine and decorative arts, located in St. Petersburg. The main museum complex includes six interconnected buildings - the Winter Palace, the Reserve House of the Winter Palace, the Small Hermitage Museum, the Great (Old) Hermitage Museum, the New Hermitage Museum and the Hermitage Theater. They have 365 rooms open to the public. Also at the disposal of the museum are the General Staff building, the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Center and the Menshikov Palace.

The museum began its history with a collection of works of art acquired in private by the Russian Empress Catherine II. Initially, this collection was located in a special palace wing - the Hermitage (from the French. Ermitage - a place of solitude, cell, hermitage, retreat; now the Small Hermitage) - from which the general name of the future museum was fixed. In 1852, a public museum was formed from a greatly expanded collection and opened to the public, located in the specially constructed building of the New Hermitage.

History
The Hermitage originated in 1764 as a private collection of Catherine II, after 317 valuable paintings were transferred to her from Berlin (according to popular rumors there were only 225) with a total value of 183 thousand thalers from the private collection of paintings by Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky, 1710-1775), due to his debt, which arose because of an unsuccessful attempt to supply grain to the Russian army, with the participation of Prince Vladimir Sergeevich Dolgorukov. Among them were paintings by such masters as Dirk van Baburen, Hendrik van Balen, Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Anthony van Dyck, Hendrik Holzius, Frans Hals, Jan Sten, Gerrit van Honthorst and other works, mostly Dutch Flemish school of the first half of the seventeenth century. These canvases became the basis on which the museum was formed. Of the 317 paintings transferred to Russia in 1764, at least 96 canvases are kept in the Hermitage today. At first, most of the paintings were located in the secluded apartments of the palace (now the Small Hermitage). Subsequently, the apartment received the name "Hermitage".

In 1769, with the assistance of Prince A. Beloselsky-Belozersky in Dresden, the Hermitage acquired a rich collection of the first minister of the King of Poland and Elector of Saxony Augustus III, Heinrich von Bruhl, including about 600 paintings by Dutch, Flemish, French and Italian artists, including including Titian's landscape “Flight into Egypt”, views of Dresden and Pirna by Bellotto, etc.

Keepers of collections in the XIX and XX centuries
Andrei Somov made a huge contribution to the study and cataloging of the collection of the Imperial Hermitage Picture Gallery, having worked as a keeper of paintings and drawings, and then as a senior keeper of the Hermitage, for a total of 22 years. It is believed that he marked the beginning of a new stage in the history of Russian art history of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. Among the paintings of this period there is an important work - a portrait of Nikolai Yusupov, painted by the Italian master Vincenzo Petrochelli (1851).

Opening of a public museum
Until the middle of the XIX century, the Hermitage fully corresponded to its name (from the French. Ermitage - a secluded place, a hermit's orphanage), since only a select few could visit the museum. So, A. S. Pushkin was able to get a pass only thanks to the recommendation of V. A. Zhukovsky, who served as a mentor to the emperor’s son. The Hermitage was opened to the public under Emperor Nicholas I on February 5 (17), 1852 in the New Hermitage building, specially built for this purpose. Then he had the richest collections of monuments of ancient Eastern, ancient Egyptian, ancient and medieval cultures, art of Western and Eastern Europe, archaeological and artistic monuments of Asia, Russian culture of the 8th — 19th centuries. By 1880, museum attendance reached 50,000 people a year.