The Hermitage is one of the most popular museums in our country; its image is firmly connected in our minds to the elegant halls of the Winter Palace. Indeed, the Winter Palace is the main and largest building of the museum, its visiting card. But the Winter Palace began to be converted to display facilities only in the twentieth century. The Hermitage as a museum did not start from here.
The first museum building in the architectural ensemble of the Winter Palace can be considered the Small Hermitage, architects Felten and Wallen-Delamot. This building consists of two pavilions - north and south, and two galleries located on the sides of the Hanging Garden. Galleries were built last, but they were allotted for exhibiting art objects. Pictures in galleries were placed by the method of continuous, "trellis" hanging.
Given the purpose, the walls of the galleries are very restrained. The main decorative load falls on the canvas, it is decorated with various stucco molding and in order to avoid monotony, due to its great length, small false domes and cylindrical arches are made here. Below the domes in floral medallions are relief profile portraits of famous West European and Russian artists, sculptors, scientists and architects - Titian, Rubens, Ghiberti, Martos, Murillo and others. These, according to their creators, were supposed to be museum interiors of the late classicism era.
The second building, intended for the storage of objects of art, was the Great Hermitage, then called Old. Initially, it consisted of two buildings - a building in line with the Small Hermitage along Palace Embankment and the Loggia Raphael building, built a little later, perpendicular to the previous building, along the Winter Canal. In the Great Hermitage of architect Felten there was a library of Russian literature, some of the rooms were reserved for residential chambers.
In the Loggia building of Raphael, the architect Quarenghi housed not only copies of the Vatican murals. The hall with windows to the courtyard, the North and South rooms at its ends were intended for the storage of art collections. Making them was quite simple. In the central hall, medallions with reliefs were located above the windows, and niches with coffered hemispherical ceilings were arranged at the ends. On the ground floor, the layout of which almost exactly corresponded to the upper, a library of foreign literature was arranged over time. The Raphael Loggia Corps is completely lost, only the wall on the canal side remains. A room with copies of the Vatican paintings is built into the building of the New Hermitage.
After the opening of the New Hermitage, the palace assembly moved there. In the middle of the 19th century, the architect Stackenschneider arranged living rooms, classrooms and ceremonial halls in the former exhibition rooms of the Old Hermitage. The ground floor was occupied by state institutions for some time.
Currently, the second floor is again reserved for exhibition halls. Here, a layout of two longitudinal suites is preserved - one facing the embankment, the second into the courtyard, and the trim intended by the Shtakenschneider for residential chambers. Particularly elegantly decorated are the halls with windows on the Neva - the Front Enfilade. It is opened by the former Front Office with jasper columns, picturesque pilasters, colored wood doors with painted porcelain medallions, gilded stucco molding and picturesque panels on the ceiling and above the doors. The decoration of the largest and most elegant double-room hall of the Old Hermitage amazes with a variety of decorative elements and materials used. Here jasper and marble, porphyry and lapis lazuli. The second room is octagonal in plan, blocked by a dome. Here, as in the following halls, the main decorative burden falls on the ceiling, abundantly decorated with gilded stucco molding, and relief desyuporta with picturesque inserts.
The halls of the New Hermitage already have a specific museum character. For the design, the German architect Leo von Klenze, who already had experience in building a public museum - the Pinakothek Munich - was involved. The construction of the building and decoration was led by N. Efimov.
According to Klenze’s idea, a sculpture of Ancient and Modern times, as well as antique art, was to be exhibited on the ground floor. Therefore, some of the halls are decorated in the ancient spirit. One of them - Twenty Column was intended for Greek and Etruscan vases. It is built like an antique basilica. The ceiling is covered with paintings in the style of antique ceramics, and on the walls are plot compositions in the Greek style. The floor is tiled with acanthus ornaments and a meander. Another hall of Ancient sculpture is solved in the form of an antique courtyard. It is decorated with white cannulated Corinthian columns, the walls are lined with artificial marble of dark lilac color, and the tiled floor is decorated with geometric and floral ornaments.
The hall, in which the architect intended to exhibit a sculpture of the Contemporary Age, is supplemented with medallions with profiles of Michelangelo, Canova, Martos and others. Portraits of outstanding sculptors are located on the ceiling, which in this hall carries the main decorative load. The vault is covered with a box vault with formwork and is abundantly covered with stucco decoration. The walls are covered with deep green artificial marble.
In the remaining halls of the first floor, the walls are also lined with colored artificial marble, and the ceilings are either with formwork painted with a floral pattern in the antique spirit, or straight, decorated with ornamented caissons.
The second floor opens the gallery of the History of ancient painting. The gallery consists of four square rooms, each of which is blocked by a dome. On the sails supporting the domes are placed bas-relief portraits of prominent artists, including Leo von Klenze himself. To decorate the gallery, paintings were written telling the history of painting.
The most solemn premises of the second floor are an enfilade of three halls with an overhead light. The gigantic vaulted vaults are completely covered with arabesque molding. Halls are designed for large-format works. The tent hall is notable for the fact that in its gable ceiling the entire rafter system covered with painting is visible.
A feature of the New Hermitage is that this building was conceived and embodied precisely for exhibiting art objects. The middle of the 19th century in Russian architecture was a time of turning to various architectural styles of the past. Decorating the halls intended for the museum, trying to create a harmony of the objects and interior being exhibited, Leo von Klenze had a happy opportunity to use elements of Greek, Roman and Renaissance architecture.
