Fifteenth- to Seventeenth-century French Painting - State Hermitage Museum Catalogue
Auteur(s) Natalia Serebriannaia (A01)
Editeur(s) HOLBERTON
Ean :
9781913645250
Résumé : For the first time in English, this lavishly illustrated catalogue presents the
collection of fifteenth- to seventeenth-century French paintings in the worldfamous
Hermitage Museum.
Including many well-known works, notably those by Nicolas Poussin and Claude
Lorrain, this catalogue represents the first full publication in English of the whole
of the Hermitage Museum’s collection of French seventeenth-century paintings, as
well as seven paintings dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since the
publication of the Russian edition in 2018 the text has been considerably reworked
and supplemented, with new photography and the addition of one further painting. It
thus marks an important milestone in the history of the Hermitage Picture Gallery.
The Hermitage collection of French painting is one of the largest and most
significant outside France. All the leading artists of the seventeenth century are
represented and there are key works by some less famous names (for instance, signed
paintings by Pierre Cauchy and Jean Daret).
This catalogue also throws light on the history of collecting in France and Russia
from the seventeenth to early twentieth century. Paintings that were once in the
most famous collections in France made their way to Russia from the middle of the
eighteenth century. Catherine the Great acquired French seventeenth-century works
among her first purchase of pictures in 1764; more than thirty arrived with the Crozat
de Thiers collection that she bought in 1772, and sixteen arrived with Sir Robert
Walpole’s collection from Houghton Hall in 1779. Four famous Claudes were bought
by Catherine’s grandson Alexander I from the estate of the late Empress Josephine at
Malmaison in 1815.
More than a third of the paintings arrived in the Hermitage after the Revolutions
of 1917, some from the collections of noble families established in the eighteenth
century (the Yusupovs and the Stroganovs), others from more recent collections
formed by statesmen and the growing wealthy middle class (Myatlev and Oliv). Many
of the works that arrived in the museum in the 1920s and 1930s had no established
provenance: as part of the research for this book, the author has worked with other
scholars at the Hermitage to discover the collections from which the paintings
derived.
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