Old Master Paintings in Soviet Museums [antikvár]

This book includes paintings by the Old Masters which are housed not only in the central, major museums of the Soviet Union, such as the Hermitage in Leningrad and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, but also in minor city and regional museums of the country. Moreover, the compiler has sought to give special attention to the lesser known collections in particular, which at times offer works of great interest. This collection of reproductions reflects the results of research, which ma'de it possible to identify some hitherto unknown pieces by such Old Masters as Anthony van Dyck, Georges de La Tour and Simon Vouet. Works of Western European art started to find their way to Russia on a large scale after Peter the Great had established the new Russian capital and cultural centre — St. Petersburg. The first Russian collector of Western painting was the Emperor himself. The imperial palaces in St. Petersburg and Peterhof, and the Kanstkammer (Chamber of Curios) founded by Peter became repositories for the first collections of pictures purchased at auctions in Europe. These acquisitions were quite large for their time: in 1716 Osip Solovyov bought 121 pictures in Holland; at about the same time another agent, Yury Kologrivov, bought 117 pictures in Brussels and Antwerp; later, 119 canvases were bought by Peter from the English merchants Evan and Elsen. Peter's collections were dominated by Dutch and Flemish painters. Jacob Stáhlin, Peter's biographer, writes that the favourite artists of the Russian Emperor were Rubens, Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Philips Wouwerman, Pieter van der Werff and Adriaen van Ostade. With the exception of aristocratic van der Werff, whose compositions were mostly sentimental and too idealized, Peter seems to have had a preference for scenes of Dutch peasant life. That inclination toward all things Dutch, including Dutch painting, should not, however, be viewed merely as a manifestation of the personal tastes of "skipper Pieter". The very spirit of the Petrine epoch was generally similar to the democratism of the Dutch burghers. To be sure, the Dutch paintings impressed Russian viewers not only by their artistic qualities. Works of such masters as Adam Silo, Peter's favourite painter of seascapes, above all appealed to the curiosity of a young nation, which was breaking out at that time onto the broad expanses of the seas. Peter appreciated Silo's profound knowledge of ship-building and nautical expertise, although purely aesthetic interests were no less foreign to him.