Art of Memories

Art of Memories
Author: Vincent Antonin Lépinay
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2019-05-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231549563

Once the home of Catherine the Great’s private art collection, Russia’s State Hermitage Museum became the largest museum in the Soviet Union and, since the collapse of the USSR, one of the most active museums in the world. The Hermitage is a global model for the collection and preservation of fine art, deeply shaped by its need to protect itself and its holdings from the world beyond its gates. In Art of Memories, Vincent Antonin Lépinay documents the Hermitage’s curatorial practices in an innovative consideration of the museum as a cultural laboratory. Lépinay analyzes the tensions between the museum as a space of exploration of the collections and as a culture heavily invested in self-protection from the outside world. During a time when traveling abroad was rare, a generation of art historians produced a culture of confined scholarship premised on their proximity to the holdings of a museum enclave. As the Hermitage has become increasingly present on the world museum scene, its culture of secrecy and orality has endured. Lépinay analyzes the ethos of Hermitage curators and scholars over the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet museum cultures, considering the mobility of art, documentation of the collection, and the transformation of expertise. Based on Lépinay’s extraordinary access to the Hermitage and the scholars who work there, Art of Memories opens the door of one of the world’s great museums to reveal how art history is made. It is an essential study for readers interested in the role that outside forces play in culture, organizations, and the production of knowledge.

The Artful Hermitage

The Artful Hermitage
Author: Arnold Alexander Witte
Publisher: L'ERMA di BRETSCHNEIDER
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2008
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9788882654771

INTRODUCTION: Lanfranco's Camerino degli Eremiti; 1. Architecture, Decoration and Typology of the Palazzetto Farnese: Camerino and Palazzetto: a reconstruction; Decoration of the Palazzetto; The giardino segreto as 'theatre of nature'; The tradition of studioli; Pliny's diaeta and its Cinquecento imitations; Studiolo, garden, and the genre of landscape-painting; The typology of the Palazzetto Farnese; Camerino and Palazzetto - decorative or functional relations?; 2. THE CARDINAL'S RETREAT: Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola; The Stanza della Solitudine; The Stanza della Penitenza; Rome: the Casa Professa-apartment; Iconography of the Cappellina Farnese; Ignatius' exemplarity; Jesuit devotional retreats; Caprarola: the Palazzina Farnese; Grottaferrata: the Palazzo Abbaziale; Camaldoli; 3. PATRONAGE, PROTECTORATE AND REGULAR REFORMS: Orazione e Morte; The Arciconfraternita and its cardinal protectors; The Quarant'Ore and the Camerino; Sixteenth-century concepts of protectorate; Impending abolition and renewal of the protectorate in 1606; Between regular reform and curial changes; Odoardo Farnese's protectorates; Discalced Carmelites and the mission; The Camerino's Eucharistic message; Saints, protectorates and paintings; 4. GARDENS FOR THE SOUL: Cardinals retreating: Sfondrato, Borromeo and Bellarmino; Bellarmino's urban retreat; Funeral monuments as models of devotion; Bellarmino's 'Ladder of Nature'; The garden of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale; Spiritual Paintings of the Universe; Scenes of martyrdom in San Vitale; Functions of the Sant'Andrea complex; Christian Doctrine and the argument of nature; Pilgrimage and the real world; Missionary theory and natural philosophy; Allegorical gardens in Seicento Rome; The Palazzetto as metaphorical Scala; 6. THE IMAGINARY, THE REAL AND THE EXEMPLARY HERMITAGE: Images of hermits; Cinquecento realities of solitary life; The case of Fra Pelagio; De-historicising the hermit; Itinerant hermits in and around Rome; Sant'Onofrio: the monk redressing as hermit; Ephemeral landscapes and theatrical hermits; Giacinto da Casale in Piacenza; Casale's grotto and the Camerino degli Eremiti.

Greeks on the Black Sea

Greeks on the Black Sea
Author: Anna A. Trofimova
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2007
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780892368839

The ancient Greeks traveled widely by sea and founded colonies in far-flung locations. On the north coast of the Black Sea were a number of such Greek settlements, places where the Greeks made contact with the local Scythian population. Greek goods were traded extensively throughout the region, and many of these often-luxurious articles eventually made their way into tombs. From its wealth of such Greek finds from the Black Sea, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has lent some 175 Greek objects to an exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa. This richly illustrated catalogue to the exhibition presents nine essays on the archaeology of the northern Black Sea region and its history, culture, and art, including sculpture, pottery, gems, and jewelry. Written by curators at the State Hermitage Museum, Greeks on the Black Sea presents an intriguing world at once Greek and barbarian.

The Hermitage

The Hermitage
Author: The Hermitage Museum
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-09-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0847842096

Highlights from the palatial Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, are beautifully reproduced in an accessible volume celebrating the museum's 250th anniversary. For 250 years, the State Hermitage Museum has been one of the world's most palatial and significant museums. The Hermitage collections were developed beginning in 1764 by Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, and now encompass more than 3 million works of art and artifacts displayed within a spectacular architectural ensemble, the heart of which is the famed Winter Palace. Now, on this important anniversary, this stunning volume captures the masterpieces that make this world-famous institution a cultural destination and a global treasure. The Hermitage: 250 Masterworks explores this sumptuous collection in the manner of a private tour, showcasing the museum's extraordinary and uniquely underpublished treasures: no other institution has thirty-six Rembrandts; works by Italian Renaissance artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Titian; Spanish artists such as Vel‡zquez, Ribera, and Murillo; Flemish baroque artists such as van Dyck, Rubens, and Jan Brueghel the Elder; impressionist and post-impressionist works by Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Degas; and modern paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Malevich, and Kandinsky. Priceless antiquities, feats of mechanical engineering such as the famous Peacock Clock, and works of sculpture and decorative arts will also be shown. With lavish reproductions accompanied by texts by the museum's leading curators, this volume is sure be cherished by art lovers around the world.

The Girl from the Hermitage

The Girl from the Hermitage
Author: Molly Gartland
Publisher: Eye & Lightning Books
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-04-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1785631896

Galina was born into a world of horrors. So why does she mourn its passing? SHORTLISTED: Impress Prize LONGLISTED: Bath Novel Award LONGLISTED: Grindstone Novel Award It is December 1941, and eight-year-old Galina and her friend Vera are caught in the siege of Leningrad, eating soup made of wallpaper, with the occasional luxury of a dead rat. Galina's artist father Mikhail has been kept away from the front to help save the treasures of the Hermitage. Its cellars could now provide a safe haven, provided Mikhail can navigate the perils of a portrait commission from one of Stalin's colonels. Nearly forty years later, Galina herself is a teacher at the Leningrad Art Institute. What ought to be a celebratory weekend at her forest dacha turns sour when she makes an unwelcome discovery. The painting she embarks upon that day will hold a grim significance for the rest of her life, as the old Soviet Union makes way for the new Russia and Galina's familiar world changes out of all recognition. Warm, wise and utterly enthralling, Molly Gartland's debut novel guides us from the old communist world, with its obvious terrors and its more surprising comforts, into the glitz and bling of 21st-century St Petersburg. Galina's story is at once a compelling page-turner and an insightful meditation on ageing and nostalgia. 'A beautifully written book that takes you right into the characters' world. Highly recommended' LUCINDA HAWKSLEY

Paintings in the Hermitage

Paintings in the Hermitage
Author: Colin T. Eisler
Publisher: Stewart Tabori & Chang
Total Pages: 653
Release: 1990
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781556701597

Including many of the paintings acquired by Catherine the Great as well as others added more recently, this book features paintings from 18th- and 19th-century France, works of the Italian Renaissance, Spanish paintings and paintings from England, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium and the USA.

The Madonnas of Leningrad

The Madonnas of Leningrad
Author: Debra Dean
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061747181

“An unforgettable story of love, survival and the power of imagination in the most tragic circumstances. Elegant and poetic.” —Isabel Allende, New York Times bestselling author of Zorro The ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye. Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping. As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind—a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . . “Extraordinary. . . . Dean’s exquisite prose shimmers . . . illuminating us to the notion that art itself is perhaps our most necessary nourishment.” —Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times bestselling author of Aloft and Native Speaker “A poignant tale.” —Booklist, starred review “Dean writes with passion and compelling drama.” —People “Rare is the novel that creates that blissful forgot-you-were-reading experience . . . but that is precisely what Debra Dean has achieved with her image-rich book.” —Seattle Post-Intelligencer “Poetic.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review “[A] heartfelt debut.” —New York Times Book Review “Remarkable”— NPR, Nancy Pearl Book Review

Treasures of the Hermitage Museum

Treasures of the Hermitage Museum
Author: Five Mile Press Staff
Publisher: Five Mile Press
Total Pages: 10
Release: 2009-04
Genre:
ISBN: 9781742114064

Celebrates one of the world's finest art collections, the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia that boasts masterpieces by da Vinci and Monet as well as many uniquely Russian items, such as glorious Faberge pieces. This book features four 96-piece jigsaws.

Persian Art

Persian Art
Author: Vladimir Lukonin
Publisher: Parkstone International
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2012-06-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1780428936

Housed in the Hermitage Museum along with other institutes, libraries, and museums in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union are some of the most magnificent treasures of Persian Art. For the most part, many of these works have been lost, but have been catalogued and published here for the first time with an unsurpassed selection of colour plates. In a comprehensive introduction, Vladimir Lukonin, Director of the Oriental Art section of the Hermitage Museum, and his colleague Anatoli Ivanov have broadly documented the major developments of Persian Art: from the first signs of civilisation on the plains of Iran around the 10th century BCE through the early 20th century. In the second part of the book they have catalogued Persian Art giving locations, origins, descriptions, and artist biographies where available. Persian Art demonstrates a common theme which runs through the art of the region over the past three millennia. Despite many religious and political upheavals, Persian Art ?? whether in its architecture, sculpture, frescoes, miniatures, porcelain, fabrics, or rugs; whether in the work of the humble craftsmen or the high art of court painters ?? displays the delicate touch and subtle refinement which has had a profound influence on art throughout the world.