Volume 5, Number 1 · August 5, 1965
In Russia's Museums
By Francis Haskell
The Hermitage Museum, Leningrad
by Pierre Descargues
Abrams, 320, 327 illus., 127 color plates pp., $7.50
Great Paintings from the Pushkin Museum, Moscow
by K.M. Malitskava
Abrams, 212, 100 color plates pp., $25.00
Medieval Georgian Enamels of Russia
by Shalva Amiranahvili
Abrams, 132, 76 color plates pp., $30.00
The Art and Artists of Russia
by Richard Hare
Methuen & Co. (London), 288, 32 color plates pp., £5.10
Rembrandt's David and Jonathan was purchased by Peter the Great in 1716, the first, and one of the most poetical, of the dazzling series of masterpieces by that artist to make the long journey to the North. The new capital had been founded only thirteen years earlier, a stockaded enclave still, surrounded by marshy wasteland: the picture was hung, presumably, in Peter's charming little palace, which so self-consciously recalls the architecture of Holland where he had spent some vitally formative months. Its immediate setting was thus familiar enough, but in every other way its arrival must have seemed fantastically incongruous: local artists were still producing variants of the traditional icons, and even in the West appreciation of Rembrandt as one of the world's great masters was only in its early stages. Other pictures followed, other palaces were built ('la fureur de bâtir chez nous est plus forte que lamais,' wrote Catherine the Great), and in 1764 the Empress installed the prizes of her collection in the sober Hermitage which she had specially made to adjoin the extravagantly baroque Winter Palace ordered by her predecessor Elizabeth. Throughout much of the history of the gallery, which celebrated its second centenary last year, there has been a strange and fruitful dichotomy between the prevailing taste of the times and the pictures that have enriched it. Shortly before the First World War French critics were congratulating themselves that fortunately only Russians and Americans were mad enough to treat seriously an artist such as Matisse—with results that can still be seen to staggering effect in both these misguided countries.
Review, 2220 words
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