M. P. Garlova
The Catherine’s Hermitage and the Empress’s Paintings.
In Catherine II’s memoirs, there is no mention of her love for or even interest in painting in her childhood or teenage years, although she had devoted a lot of time to her lf-education. Her studies were restricted to politics, philosophy, history, and literature. However, her predecessor to the throne, Elizabeth, known for her good taste, brought in artists who decorated her palace with picturesque Baroque ceilings and sopraportas. She loved painting, understood it, and collected it for her own pleasure. Many in her Court followed her example. During her travels abroad she became acquainted with magnum opus from previous periods, and with contemporary painters. The acquisition of major art collections by the Saint Petersburg Court during the reign of Catherine the Great was not only desirable or even necessary—it was inevitable. On his travels abroad, Peter the Great had en many curiosities and collections of magnificent paintings at European courts, and in 1717, through his agents, had already started acquiring paintings in artistic centres in the
Netherlands, France, and Italy. Under Peter the Great “the task of prerving art and antiquity was recognized as a matter of state.”1 Catherine II, fearful, especially in the first years of her reign, of accusations of usurpation of power, made a point of proclaiming that she was continuing Peter the Great’s work. “Started—completed” reads the inscription on her portrait by Roslin (cat. 1), where she points to the bust of the first Russian emperor.2 Collecting art was one of Peter’s multiple undertakings, and it also occupied an important place in Catherine II’s agenda when she ascended to the throne, becau having announced her commitment to the ideas of the French Enlightenment, she had to appear before Europe as an enlightened monarch who fostered the development of the arts and sciences in her country. Politically, this was one of the most important reasons for the ri of Russia’s prestige in Europe. Catherine II understood the need for a decisive policy to swiftly rai the Russian Court culturally to the same level as the best royal hous in Europe. France and Austria, for example, already had two centuries’ experience of owning unique art collections, and in Germany even minor princes could boast of their exceptional galleries. The palaces of Frederick II of Prussia a
nd August III of Saxony were quickly filled with priceless paintings, and Catherine II nd an urgent need to emulate the splendour of the collections of the two astute connoisurs and passionate art lovers.
Some aristocrats, such as A. S. Stroganov and I. I. Shuvalov, became passionate collectors and were very familiar with the European art markets, which started to be quite lively in the 1750s. The Empress Catherine II understood the need to collect large amounts of works of art at once to get herlf noticed after an opportunity aro by chance in 1764 to immediately acquire a large number of paintings collected by Berlin negotiator G. E. Gozkowski, one of Frederick II’s brokers. Becau of the Seven Years’ War, Frederick II had stopped purchasing paintings and Gozkowski incurred huge loss. In debt to the Russian War Ministry, he propod to the Russian ambassador, V. S. Dolgorukov, that he pay off part of the debt with paintings. Catherine II was happy to deliver a blow to Frederick’s pride, her enemy in the Seven Years’ War, and bought the collection of more then two hundred canvas, including veral works of considerable artistic quality: three paintings by Rembrandt, Family Portrait by Jacob Jordaens, Allegory
of Peace, Art and Wealth by Hans von Aachen, and Portrait of a Young Man with a Glove by Frans Hals, The Resurrection Paolo Verone. This collection became the foundation for the Hermitage, Catherine II the Great’s pet project, astounding in its scale and pace. This collection became the foundation stone of one of the most famous activity of Catherine the Great – Hermitage collection.
As in almost all her undertakings, where art was concerned the Empress surrounded herlf with experts, drew on their advice and ability, and profited from their opinions and sound judgment. Prince D. A. Golitsyn, who in 1765 was appointed ambassador to Paris and in 1768 was transferred to The Hague, played the most active role. He was a friend of Denis Diderot and E. M. Falconet, as well as Voltaire and Melchior Grimm—the writer and long-time correspondent of Catherine II—and was acquainted with François Tronchin, the agent in Geneva who acquired art objects. The Empress’s agent in Rome was Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein, an admirer of the Classical theorist Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who devoted his entire life to the study of antiquity.
After acquiring the Gozkowski collection, Catherine II commissioned works from individual artists favoured by Diderot: Francesco Casanova, Joph Marie Vien’s «Mars and Venus».
The collections grew with incredible speed. In order to hou them near the Winter Palace, the Small Hermitage (1764 75, by the architect Yuri Fel’ten bad on Jean Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe’s design) and the Large Hermitage, now known as the Old Hermitage (1771 87, by Fel’ten) were built. Catherine II had acquired a taste for collecting, knew her paintings well, knew how to u a catalogue, and often called her new passion “gluttony,” just as Prince Elector Lothar Franz von Schönborn, who ruled at the turn of the venteenth and eighteenth centuries, called his obssion and insatiability as a collector Malereiwurm (painting worm) and Bilderappetit (appetite for pictures).3 However, the Empress did not express any particular preferences for the acquisition of specific works, unlike true art lovers such as Frederick II, who passionately collected Flemish and Italian painters from the sixteenth and venteenth centuries and decorated the walls of his castle Sanssouci with paintings by Watteau. He did not think m
uch of contemporary Italian painters and said of Germans that they were generally too crude for painting and were not even worth training. His sister Wilhelmine von Bayreuth barely managed to draw his attention to the leading painters in Rome: the Italian Pompeo Batoni and the Saxon Anton Raphael Mengs, who purveyed Classical ideas developed by Winckelmann.4 With a few exceptions, Catherine II did not express her opinions about painting as openly as her Prussian relative.5 The beginning of her reign coincided with a change in art styles. It is well known that she did not like the Baroque, preferring the noble simplicity of Classicism, though at the time many paintings were still strongly imbued with Rococo or showed a hint of ntimentalism. If she did not like something, she simply “exiled” it to one of the suburban palaces. Joph Marie Vien’s painting Minerva, for example, was prented to the Academy of Arts, where Charles van Loo’s works from the L. M. van Loo collection were also nt. Sometimes it was the other way around: Chardin’s Still Life with the Attributes of the Arts, bought by Golitsyn especially for the Academy of Arts, was kept by Catherine II for her own enjoyment in the Hermitage. The Empress devoted a lot of time and effort to the Picture Gallery, and even helped the r
estorer clean off mould from damp objects with her own hands.6 Astonished contemporaries believed that she was taking on too many projects at once and that she loved to start, direct, and correct them all at the same time. She forced her ministers to work without stop, and Frederick the Great himlf marvelled at her energy.7
Agents of the industrious Catherine II stepped up their work, izing every opportunity to make acquisitions in Paris, and at auctions in The Hague, Amsterdam, and Dresden. Purchas of Old Master paintings alternated with acquisitions of and commissions for works by contemporary painters. In 1766, Golitsyn bought veral French and Dutch paintings at a sale of the collection of the King’s painter and member of the French Académie, Jacques André Joph Aved (1702 66). A year later, he bought a ries of paintings by Dutch and Flemish masters, including Berchem, at an auction of the posssions of Jean de Jullienne (1686 1767), patron of the arts, collector, and director of a Gobelins factory. In the summer of 1768, Denis Diderot tried to acquire posthumously the entire fine collection of Guegna, the former cretary of Louis XV, but h
e managed to get only two Bathing Girls and one Bathing Boy by Gerrit Dou and the wonderful painting Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Murillo. He also misd the opportunity to buy Rembrandt’s Carpenter’s Family, which ended up in the Louvre. In contrast, Golitsyn had a wonderful stroke of luck: before leaving Paris for The Hague, he acquired from a certain André-Joph, Marquis D’Ancezune duc de Caderous (1695 1767), one of the Hermitage’s most valuable Rembrandts, The Return of the Prodigal Son , which came from Bishop Kliment August von Bayern, who collection was sold off after his death in Bonn in 1764 and shipped to Paris for sale. The Return of the Prodigal Son was one of the unsold paintings at the auction and cost the Hermitage less than a ries of works by Teniers, Wouwerman, and Ostade.
