The New Hermitage
The Building and the Rooms
The 19th century was the time of creation of public museums in Europe.
The New Museum in Berlin was built in 1830. In 1830 the architect Leo
von Klenze completed construction of the building for "the marbles from
Aegina" and for the Albani collection of sculptures purchased by the future
king of Bavaria Ludvig I, the building, known as the Glyptothek in Munich.
In 1836 the picture gallery Pinacothek, constructed by the same architect,
opened in Munich. It was this fashionable architect, who built the first
museum buildings and was invited by Nicholas I to construct the Emperor's
Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.
The New Hermitage was not a typical example of the Petersburg architecture.
It revealed not only distinctive features of the style of Leo von Klenze
but also the tendencies of the "Historicism". It managed to combine in
a single composition elements of different styles: Antique, Renaissance,
Baroque, all being interpreted with the accent on the Classicism. Every
facade of the building has its own decoration. The main facade, facing
the Millionnaya street, is notable for the monumental portico with ten
wonderful figures of the atlantes struck by Alexander Terebenev from grey
Serdobol granite. His immediate assistant, stone-mason Gavriil Balushkin
wrote that 150 masters worked with Terebenev. Klenze thought highly of
the skill of Terebenev. "The beauty and noble character of these sculptures,
accurateness and delicacy of work, glittering polish are beyond comparison
and allow to say that as Egyptian Pharaohs could make their monolyth colossi,
so these telamones are no worse for the Extreme North"- he wrote.
Apart from the portico with the atlantes and ornamental decor the facades
are embellished with 28 sculptures and high reliefs on the eastern pediment
that represent famous artists, architects, sculptors and engravers of
all times and countries. The arrangement of the sculptural portraits of
artists and sculptors in the niches and on the corbels demonstrated where
the rooms with paintings or sculptures of this or that school were located.
Leo von Klenze paid only flying visits to Saint Petersburg and his project
was designed without taking into account the existing architectural surroundings.
The architects of the Special Commission, established by the order of
Nicholas I, Vasily Stasov and Nikolai Yefimov introduced substantial changes
in the design of their colleague from Munich. They changed the location
of the main entrance to the Museum, added expressive details to the facade
facing the Millionnaya street and what is most important, preserved the
building of the Great Hermitage of Catherine's time.
The New Hermitage was the first building in Russia constructed with the
idea to house there a huge art collections of the Museum. It is also a
monument of art by itself.
Rooms and Interiors
When creating the interiors for the exhibiting works of art Leo von Klenze
kept in mind close connection of the Hermitage and the Winter Palace:
"This Museum being a part of the royal residence has to be designed and
decorated as an endless suite of rooms luxiriously and elegantly embellished..."
More than 800 drawings and sketches were made by Klenze to show every
detail of the decor of the rooms, furniture and even the exhibition that
the architect strived to include in the ensemble of the interiors. These
interiors are preserved till today almost untouched.
The Gallery of History of Ancient Painting
The idea of Leo von Klenze was to reproduce in the paintings of the gallery
the history of the development of painting in Greece and Rome from archaic
coloring of idols to the decay of art and culture of Antiquity in the
epoch of the great migration of peoples. Grotesque ornaments, pictures
by the Munich artist Georg Hiltensperger in the encaustic technique (wax
paints on copper), plafonds in the cupolas by the Italian artist Chosroe
Duzi are free imitations of the paintings in the antique buildings, created
by the imagination of the architect. The pictures reproduce works of famous
ancient artists - Zeuxis, Parrasius, Apelles - known from the descriptions
of ancient authors. The sides of the vaults are decorated with thirty
six reliefs with profiles of the world famous artists - Giotto, Perugino,
Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Holbein. There
is also a "portrait" of apostle Luke and Klenze himself. Today the gallery
houses sculptures of the well-known masters of the late 18th - early 19th
The Sky-light Rooms
The most spacious and most beautifully decorated rooms of the first floor
are three rooms with sky-light windows arranged one by one, designed by
Leo von Klenze.These rooms with glass windows on top and vast huge walls
were meant to display the largest pictures of the collection. Though the
windows were not particularly big and the light on a winter day in the
northern country was not enough still the idea to give diffused light
for the pictures through them was a great innovation one hundred years
ago that proved that the requirements for the modern museum were quite
definite. As long as the function of the building was both a museum and
a palace, the architect accentuated the decor of the Sky-light Rooms on
the ceiling. Huge vaults with wide friezes on top are covered with gilded
arabesque stucco decoration against light blue background that is contrasting
with dark red of the walls where the pictures hung. "Rich and versatile"
appearance of these rooms is to a large extent created by the specially
designed furniture. Carved gilded sofas and arm-chairs upholstered with
crimson velvet were executed in the court furniture workshops from the
designs of Leo von Klenz. Vases, standard lamps and table plates, made
of semi-precious stones and richly ornamented with gilded bronze, were
made at the Ekaterinburg and Peterhof lapidary works in the mid-19th century.
Now in the Sky-light Rooms exhibitions of Italian and Spanish painting
of the 16th -18th centuries are on display.
The Main Staircase of the New Hermitage
The monumental Main Staircase with the splendid colonnade on the first
floor produces solemn impression immediatly when you enter the Museum.
The entrance hall with dark pink columns of polished granite is opposed
to the wide straight staircase consisting of three flights of white marble
stairs. The walls of yellow polished stucco imitating Siena marble complete
the composition. The gallery surrounding the top of the staircase is decorated
with two rows of well-proportioned columns of Serdobol granite that are
in elegant harmony with the yellow colour of the stucco walls. The noble
colour-scheme of the staircase, its monumentality and harmony characteristic
of the Classicism are inherent in this interior.
The upper landing of the staircase houses vases of coloured stone, made
in the 19th century in Russia, and works of Italian sculptors of the 17th
-19th centuries Bartolini, Barozzi, Tenerani.
The Hall of Twenty Columns
The hall was designed specially to exhibit Greek and Etruscan painted
vases. Leo von Klenze, being an expert in Antique art, applied some devices
of Greek architects. Two rows of perfectly polished columns made of Serdobol
granite separate the central part from the side ones. The walls, frieze
and caisson ceiling are painted in the style of antique painted ceramics
by Feodor Wunderlich. The paintings on the walls, reproducing subject
scenes from the painted vases of Ancient Greece, were executed by Pyotr
Shamshin. Antique vessels included in the compositions remind that the
purpose of the hall was to display vases. The floor is according to ancient
tradition a stone mosaic made of coloured marble at the Peterhof lapidary
works. The monuments of culture of Ancient Italy are displayed in the
Portico with Atlantes
The New Hermitage
Main Staircase of the New Hermitage
Portrait of Leo von Klenze
Fragment of the mozaic floor in the Hall of Twenty