This new publication is outstanding for the exceptional richness of the illustrative material. It truly is an album, containing an unprecedented quantity of illustrations – almost one thousand!
One more original featureof this publication – that it is organized as an illustrated guide-book to the buildings of the Hermitage following the location of its displays. Each of the sections of the album provides an introduction first to the architecture of a building and its interiors, and then with the museum displays and masterpieces located there.
But it is not just today’s Hermitage that is presented on the pages of this book. For the first time present-day views of the Hermitage halls and displays are presented consistently in direct juxtaposition with historical depictions – drawings, watercolours, paintings, portraits and photographs.
They form a visual picture of the history of the Hermitage, allowing us to look into its past, to vividly imagine the palatial halls of the formal residence of the Russian tsars and its occupants, the displays of the imperial museum, the anxious periods of revolution and war, and the faces of those who laboured with loyalty and inspiration to the glory of Russia’s great museum.
Text in English. St Petersburg, 2006. 560 pages.
|
go back
