Big Hermitage. State Hermitage Hermitage building dimensions

The Great Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The historical building in the style of classicism, intended to house the palace art collections, was built according to the project of Yu. M. Felten in 1771-1787. Today the building is part of the museum complex of the State Hermitage.

The building was called the Great Hermitage because it was larger than the previously built Small Hermitage. In the 19th century, the name Old Hermitage was already used to designate the complex of buildings in order to distinguish it from the New Hermitage, but chronologically this does not quite correspond to the order in which the buildings were erected.

In 1792, according to the project of Giacomo Quarenghi, from the side of the Winter Canal, the so-called “Raphael loggias” were added to the building - a gallery with copies of Raphael frescoes, exactly repeating the gallery of the papal palace in the Vatican.

In 1835-1837, an arch was built over the Winter Canal, connecting the Great Hermitage with the Hermitage Theatre, and even earlier a similar air passage to the Small Hermitage was built on the other side of the building.

Adjacent to the Winter Palace and the Small Hermitage, the Large Hermitage is outwardly more strict and concise; this was done on purpose to further emphasize the expressiveness of the main part of the palace complex - the Winter Palace.

In addition to storing palace art collections, part of the premises of the Great Hermitage was used for the needs of the State Council, and later - the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal, for which a separate entrance and a special Soviet staircase were made in the building.

In 1852, by decree of Emperor Nicholas I, the New and Big Hermitages were opened to the public.

The Big Hermitage is included in the Unified State Register of Cultural Heritage Objects (monuments of history and culture) of Russia.

Note to tourists:

A visit to the Great Hermitage will be of interest to tourists interested in the architecture of the second half of the 18th century, to everyone who wants to see the expositions located in the building, and can also become one of the points of the excursion program while exploring neighboring attractions -,

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Books

• Hermitage Museum. Western European drawing
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(in 1719-1723) and the house of G.P. Chernyshev, as well as the house of court laundresses. The latter was adjacent to the Winter Palace of Peter I.

The galleries of the neighboring Small Hermitage were the first specialized premises for storing the imperial collections. Soon these galleries were not enough. In May 1770, Catherine II ordered the construction of a new stone building along the Palace Embankment "in line with the Hermitage". It was erected from February 1771 for two years according to the project of Yu. M. Felten and under the guidance of stone master Giovanni Geronimo Rusca. The work was completed in 1774. Then a new building 10 axes wide appeared on the banks of the Neva, which was connected to the northern pavilion of the Small Hermitage by a passage gallery. The new building occupied the former site of Kruys.

Two more years later, on the site of the dilapidated house of Chernyshev and the house of court laundresses, it was decided to continue the construction of a stone building, which now stretches all the way to the Winter Canal. The work, which began in the middle of 1777 and lasted for two construction seasons, was carried out according to the project and under the guidance of the same specialists. The second part of the building received 17 axes along the facade. The general, uniting two parts, facade was created in 1787. Later, an arch was built over the Winter Canal, connecting the Great Hermitage with the Hermitage Theatre.

The decoration of the interiors of the Great Hermitage was carried out gradually, Catherine II discussed with Felten the design of each hall.

Due to the existence of the Small Hermitage, the new building became known as the Great Hermitage. After the appearance of the New Hermitage in the neighborhood, this building began to be called the Old Hermitage. It housed the palace art collection and library. The interiors of the Great Hermitage were described by I. G. Georgi:

"A number of rooms on the banks of the Neva are decorated with the most exquisite taste, the floors are piece, the ceilings are painted, large rounded windows with mirrored glass, crystal chandeliers, silk curtains with tassels, rich butts or stoves, doors with mirrors, mirrors, corner tables, rich clocks, chairs, sofas, etc. In all rooms there are also paintings and rich vases, urns, groups, statues, busts of national heroes and other great persons, pillars and various artificial things made of plaster, marble, jasper, yakhont, emerald, crystal, porphyry and from other stones, also stucco work, porcelain, bronze, carved from wood, etc. Cabinets and cabinets in which gems and other jewelry are stored, watch machines, etc. are the most elegant work of Roentgen, Mayer and other glorious masters of this art "[cited . according to: 2, p. 425, 426].

Most of the premises of the Great Hermitage were given over to the placement of collections. But some rooms were residential. Here were the Sofa Room, Billiard Room, Bedchamber and Lavatory. The upper and lower floors housed the rooms of the ladies-in-waiting and other persons close to the court. The entrance to the building was from the side of the Winter Canal.

Behind the building of the Great Hermitage, the old two-story buildings of the laundry house were originally left. In their place, in 1792, the architect D. Quarenghi built a new building of the Great Hermitage to house the Raphael Loggia. This loggia is an exact copy of the gallery of the papal palace in the Vatican. Only if in Rome it is open, then in St. Petersburg, due to the cold climate, the loggias from the side of the Winter Canal are closed with windows. Copies of drawings from the loggias of Raphael in 1778 began to be made by the Italian artist Christoph Unterberger, who was assisted by V. Peter. They were led by one of the most famous archaeologists, I.F. Reifenstein, who was a confidant of Catherine II. It was on his advice that Catherine II invited Giacomo Quarenghi to St. Petersburg.

Initially, Catherine II wanted to arrange only one section of the loggia. But N. B. Yusupov, who organized these works, convinced the empress and the pope of the need to copy the entire hall.

There are two entrances to the building. The one closest to the Small Hermitage is called "Soviet". This name has nothing to do with the USSR. The entrance was used by members of the State Council and the Committee of Ministers, which met in the building of the Great Hermitage from January 1, 1810 to 1870. The main staircase also began to be called "Soviet". The second entrance has a more modest name - "Small entrance".

Initially, court servants lived here, in the 19th century the premises began to be used as storage facilities for collections. In 1852, by decree of Nicholas I, the New and Big Hermitages were opened to the public. In 1860, the interiors were reconstructed under the guidance of the architect A. I. Stackenschneider. He also arranged a metal "umbrella" with lanterns at the eastern entrance from the Neva.

The premises occupied by the State Council and the Committee of Ministers were returned to the Hermitage in 1885.

In 1899, the front rooms became living quarters.

Inspection of the Hermitage begins with the passage from the vestibule towards the Main Staircase. It was also called the Ambassadorial, and later the Jordanian, but in many guidebooks it is still included simply as the Main Staircase. The long gallery through which we move, with semi-circular vaulted ceilings and rhythmically repeating pylons, with walls and ceiling of a calm white tone, should prepare us for the perception of the magnificent, ornate beauty of the luxuriously decorated front staircase. As soon as we approach it, we get the first vivid impression: against the backdrop of a niche, framed by columns, a marble sculpture sparkles with whiteness, stucco patterns on the wall glitter with gilding, streams of light pour from above. The beauty of this staircase is revealed gradually. While still on the lower steps, you suddenly feel its huge size. High above your head (somewhere at the level of the sixth floor is a huge ceiling (a painting on the ceiling by the artist F. Gradizzi) depicting the gods on Mount Olympus.

Here you immediately feel the spaciousness, the abundance of air and light. It seems that it penetrates from everywhere - not only from large windows, but also from the side of blank walls, where mirrors reflect its rays, creating the illusion of greater illumination. Climbing the side flights, you admire the sculptures near the windows and mirrors, slender pilasters, intricate curls of gilded molding patterns. And, finally, from the side platforms, like the final chord, an even more majestic spectacle opens up: a giant colonnade of ten monolithic gray columns of Serdobol granite supports semicircular ceiling vaults, decorated with molding, gilding and images of caryatid sculptures.

In 1771 - 1787, next to the "Lamotov Pavilion" on the Neva embankment, the architect Yu. M. Felten (1730 - 1801) built a building that later became known as the "Old Hermitage". And in the middle of the 19th century, to accommodate the overgrown collections, a special museum building was created - the "New Hermitage", completed in 1850 by the architect N. E. Efimov (1799 - 1851) under the direction of V. P. Stasov, according to the project of L. Klenze (1784 - 1864).

This staircase was the main entrance to the building of the New Hermitage. Its entrance from the side of the street is decorated with granite sculptures of ten Atlanteans, created by Academician A.I. Terebenev (1815 - 1859). The design of the stairs is designed in the spirit of late classicism - using elements of classical art, with its characteristic clarity, symmetry, and the predominance of clear and straight lines.

A wide staircase of sixty-nine white marble steps is bordered on both sides by smooth, unadorned wall planes covered with an even, shiny layer of yellow stucco. Its warm tone contrasts spectacularly with the cool gray tone of the porphyry monolithic columns that rise in two parallel rows high above the walls of the stairs. Daylight, penetrating from the windows on the left and right, sparkles with glare on the surface of the columns and, hiding part. their volume, creates the illusion of even greater harmony, lightness and grace. From the lower landing, the scale of the stairs is especially noticeable. Through the wide doors of the second floor, you can see the halls and the paintings exhibited in them (you should get acquainted with them a little later).

The first visitors to the museum, which opened on February 7, 1852, climbed the Main Staircase of the New Hermitage. Its fifty-six exhibition halls housed collections of Italian, Dutch, Flemish and Russian art. However, the museum was not public, designed for a wide visitor. Initially, in order to enter the museum, a special permit was required. It was given out only to a select few. Even well-known Russian artists who had to work in the halls did not always achieve such permission. The inscriptions on the labels of the paintings in the halls were made in French. The number of visitors to the Hermitage at first was small, but later, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when free access to the museum was opened, it increased significantly.

The huge growth in museum attendance during the Soviet era, the expansion of exhibition space at the expense of the halls of the Winter Palace, required the transfer of the entrance to the museum to the more spacious Main Staircase of the Winter Palace, which has extensive vestibules. This also improved the connection between the exhibitions of the Department of the History of Culture and the Art of the Ancient World, located on both sides of the Main Staircase of the New Hermitage.

The Soviet staircase, built in the middle of the 19th century by the architect Stackenschneider, got its name due to the fact that members of the State Council passed through its entrance on their way to meetings chaired by the tsar. The staircase connects the three buildings: it communicates with the Small Hermitage through a passage corridor, on the opposite side - along the embankment line - the Old Hermitage is located, the doors in the center (against the windows) lead to the halls of the New Hermitage. The plafond on the stairs is the work of the French artist F. Doyen (XVIII century) - “Virtue represents the Russian youth to Minerva”.

On the landing of the second floor of the Soviet Stairs there is a large malachite vase, made at the Yekaterinburg factory in 1843 using the “Russian mosaic” technique (thin plates of stone, skillfully put together so that a beautiful pattern is formed, are glued to the base using special mastic). Wonderful works of stone-cutting art, created at this Ural factory, as well as at the Peterhof (the oldest in Russia, which arose under Peter III) and the Altai Kolyvan factories, adorn many halls and stairs of the Hermitage - the largest treasury of Russian colored stone.

Stone was also widely used in the design of the halls themselves. So, in the Twenty-Column Hall, the columns were created by the craftsmen of the Peterhof Lapidary Factory from gray Serdobol granite. The entire floor in this hall is paved with a mosaic composed of several hundred thousand pieces of stone.

Kolyvan vase

One of the most remarkable creations of Russian stone cutters of the past is the famous Kolyvan vase. Created from a beautiful stone of Revneva jasper, it impresses with its size, beauty of form and perfection of material processing. The height of the vase is more than two and a half meters, the large diameter of the bowl is five meters, the small one is over three meters. With a weight of nineteen tons (this is the heaviest vase in the world made of hard stone), it does not look bulky. The thin stem, the elongated oval shape of the bowl, dissected from the sides and bottom by radially diverging "spoons", the proportionality of the parts give it elegance and lightness.

The vase was made from a block of stone, which was processed for two years at the find site, and then a thousand workers delivered it fifty miles to the Kolyvan factory, cutting roads in the forests and creating river crossings for this. The masters of the Kolyvan cutting factory worked directly on the execution of the vase itself, which was created according to the project of the architect Melnikov, for twelve years, having completed the work by 1843. It was delivered to St. Petersburg with great difficulty, disassembled (the vase consists of five parts, and the main one - the bowl - is monolithic). The vase was transported to the Urals on a special cart, which was harnessed from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and sixty horses. And then along the Chusovaya, Kama, Volga, Sheksna and Mariinsky system they were transported on a barge to the place of unloading on the Neva embankment. After a preliminary strengthening of the foundation, seven hundred and seventy workers installed it in the hall of the Hermitage, where it remains to this day. The Kolyvan vase, one of the most grandiose and amazing in terms of mastery of the execution of works of Russian stone-cutting art, rightfully occupies an honorable place among the treasures of the Hermitage.