The Hermitage

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9/30

Dobre Utra—again, I didn’t take the language class, but this is my phonetic spelling of Russian Good Morning.

Last touring day—The Hermitage and Catherine’s Palace

We were up early, walking around the deck and I noticed a man sweeping around the dock area.  This city is very clean, even though it does have lots of graffiti. 

We also saw 2 or 3 men fishing from the steps of the dock area the two mornings we were docked there.  Nick asked a man who we saw fishing during our city tour yesterday, what kind of fish he was catching, and they had bass and smelt.

front of Hermitage

We are headed to the Hermitage- a famous art museum here in St Petersburg- this morning, we will have lunch at a rather famous place in Pushkin (Alexander Putin has celebrated his birthdays there) and after lunch we will tour Catherine’s Palace.  The buses we are using provide hearing/speaking equipment for all passengers, so the tours will be much more enjoyable than some when we strain to hear and understand the guides.

An apartment building is being torn down across from where our ship is docked and it is fascinating to watch the long arm of the crane pick away at pieces of the building.  This seems to be a really slow process, no huge wrecking ball, or explosion, just pick and pick til a piece falls down.

The Hermitage is so huge, with so many exhibits, that our guide Natalia says it would take 8 years to see it all.   It is one of the largest museums in the world with 12,000 paintings and 200,000 items in their collection.  The name suggests a place for solitude, parts of it started out small (by Russian royalty standards) and grew as collections grew, and as several buildings were joined.  It began as a winter palace for Empress Elizabeth but was used by Catherine the Great as her winter residence and place to keep her growing collections.  There are 1,057 rooms in the winter palace, 117 staircases (we discovered at the bottom of each staircase is a WC-bathroom- good to know), and 1945 windows.   Catherine collected 3,000 paintings herself and founded the museum in 1764- not for the general public, however.  In the mid 19^th century,  (1851) part of the museum was opened to the public  After the October revolution (Bolshevik) the entire Hermitage parts were joined as one building and it was opened to the public

 They have some rules:  No bags, no water, no coats, we may take pictures,  but NO FLASH.

Do not think I can do the tour justice in this blog entry.  We tried to take pictures, but eventually N got a guidebook, because the paintings just didn’t photograph well.  I will scan some and include them here.

As we went through the administrative part of the building we were told to notice the really thick walls (remember this was originally a place where royalty lived in winter)  We saw a restaurant, an internet café (but no time to investigate) and of course the inevitable gift shops.

There is an Egyptian area with items brought to Russia in the 19^th Century.  One of the first items we saw was an enormous green stone vase, which caused a wall to be opened to bring it in the building.

The paintings are arranged (at least the part we saw) by chronological order and by country of origin.  We began with Italians of the15th Century.  De La Robia (please excuse my spelling, I’m doing it phonetically) was pointed out to us as a prominent sculptor in Italy during that time.   In the 16^th Century area, we saw 2 Botticelli’s, and two Da Vinci Madonnas.   The building has architectural wonders other than the paintings.  Hand painted ceilings, inlaid doors, and mosaic floors are beautiful, especially when you consider when and how they were made.

We walked through an ornate hall, which is supposedly an exact copy of a hall in the Vatican, for which Catherine received permission.

The museum originally had 5 Raphael paintings, but 3 were sold after the October Revolution.  One, Madonna Conistable is the usual grouping of Madonna and child, but she is reading a book- it was bought by one of the tsars for his wife, but then was given to the museum when the tsarina died.  

Raphael's Holy Family

 The other Raphael was of the holy family dressed in 17^th century clothing.  It was considered quite unusual to depict them in “modern” dress.

We saw a Michelangelo statue called Crouching Boy, which is not finished.  He was told he wouldn’t get paid for it, so he quit.  

Michelangelo's crouching boy

In one really huge room we were directed to look at the skylights.  This was (and is) the best way to light the paintings so that museum viewers can have the best view of masterpieces.

Several huge (entire wall) paintings of Venice and Dresden were used to rebuild and restore the cities after they were destroyed in the bombings of WW II. 

Moving from Italian to Spanish painters  we saw a painting by Diego de Velasquez of men having breakfast.  The Spanish paintings are very dark and not “clear”.  We were asked how many people were in the painting, most people answered 4, turns out it was only 3, an optical illusion made it look like 4.  Paintings by Goya and El Greco were in this area as well.

The Hermitage has the second largest collections of Rembrandts in the world, with Amsterdam, having the most.    He was considered to be too realistic for his time.    The picture of Christ being removed from the cross was an example of his realistic depiction.  I mentioned earlier that one of the rules is that no water may be brought into the museum.  That was not always a rule, but a man with a bottle of “water” asked a guide which was the most expensive painting in the museum and he was taken to this one.  He opened his bottle and threw acid on the painting.  It has been “restored” but only 20-30% of the painting is Rembrandt, the rest was painted by restorers.  So—no water in here.

 Some of our group went to see impressionists, but I didn’t.  Picaso  and the others of this type don’t appeal to me. And by that time I had lost N and tried to back track to find him.  He was in the bus before me, but I was a little concerned.