The Hermitage guide

The collection of materials which illustrate the mature medieval cultures in present-day Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan is, infortunately, incomplete. Particularly notable among objects of Georgian provenance are a medallion of St George executed in the technique of cloisonné enamel, fragments of silver icon frames from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries, including two plaques by the eleventh-century master craftsman Ivaneh Monisadzeh, and details of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century carved architectural decorations, a recent gift to the Hermitage from the Georgian SSR Museum of Arts. Among relics of Armenian origin there are fragments of fresco paintings from the Bakhtageki church at Ani (thirteenth century); a bell, found near Poti, and some tenth- to thirteenth-century ceramics and fragments of stucco decorations from the ninth or tenth and twelfth or thirteenth centuries, yielded by the excavations at Ani, Anberd and Dvin, and recently donated to the Hermitage by the History Museum of Armenia. The culture and arts of the peoples living in the territory of Azerbaijan are illustrated by tiles of Iranian work from Pir Hussein Revanan’s tomb at Khanakah (west of Baku), ceramics from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, and bas-reliefs and bronze cauldrons from medieval Daghestan (again mainly from the Kubachi village).

A. Bank, V. Lukonin

55

Statue of Pharaoh Amenemhet III

Black granite. Egypt. 1900—1800 B.C.

56

Decoration for a tunic with a representation of the Goddess Gaea

Fabric. Coptic Egypt. 4th century

57

Relief with archers

Alabaster. Assyria. 8th century

58

Eagle-shaped water-carrier

Bronze. Persia. 11th century

59

Neck ornament

Gold. Eastern Persia. 4th century B.C.

60

Diptych representing circus scenes

Ivory. Byzantium. 5th century

61

Icon of St Gregory the Thaumaturgist

Byzantium. 12th century

62

Airtam frieze

Marl limestone. Central Asia. 2nd century

63

Patterned fabric

Persia. 16th century

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Painted faience bowl

Persia. 12th century

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Bronze figure of a winged deity

Urartu. 7th century

66

Sassanian silver dish with a representation of King Shapur II hunting

Persia. 4th century

67

Glass lamp

Syria. 14th century

68

Painted faience jug

Turkey, Iznik. 16th century

69

Silver phalar (decoration of a horse harness)

Graeco-Bactria (?). 3rd century B.C.

70

A Youth and a Girl on Horseback. Fresco

Central Asia, Pianjikent. 8th century

71

Head of a Buddhist monk

Unbaked clay. Central Asia. Ajin-Tepe Monastery. 8th century

72

Clay figurines: Bodhisattva and monk

China. 7th century

73

Crystal vessel

Egypt. 10th century

74

Porcelain pitcher

China. 14th century

75

Deity of the Moon

Paper, mineral colours. Mongolia, Khara-Khoto. 9th century

76

Ando Hiroshige. 1797—1858. Japan

Landscape

77

Piled rug

Persia, Kashan. Second half of the 19th century

78

Bronze cauldron from the Mosque of Khwaja Ahmad Yasevi

Town of Turkestan. 14th century

79

Silver dish representing a Nereid riding a hippocampus

Rome. 2nd century

80

Lacquered box

Painted by Muhammad Ali. Persia. 18th century

81

Icon of Jama, Master of Hell

Tibet, Lamaian school. 19th century

82

Buddha Amida Meeting the Souls of Righteous Men

Silk, mineral colours. Mongolia, Khara-Khoto 9th century

83

Steel dagger

The Caucasus. 19th century

84

Ladies on the Terrace

Miniature on paper. India. Lamaian school. 18th century

The Department of Western European Art

The early history of the Department of Western European Art may be said to resemble, in some respects, that of St Petersburg-Leningrad itself. Just as the new Russian capital, founded on the barren, swampy banks of the Neva, came to rival the luxury and splendour of Europe’s ancient capitals in a mere two and a half decades, so the collection of works of Western European art, which was started in 1764 — the date traditionally regarded as the year of the Hermitage’s foundation — needed only twenty-five years to attain that wealth and variety which placed it on a par with the most celebrated collections of Western Europe.

Isolated specimens of Western European art had of course found their way into Russia during the preceding periods, especially during the reign of Peter the Great, but consistent and purposeful collecting began only in the second half of the eighteenth century. The earliest acquisitions made by Catherine II were intended to decorate the sumptuous apartments of the huge new Winter Palace. Very soon, however, the palace collection outgrew its decorative function and turned into a veritable art museum, the nucleus of the future Hermitage.