Apoxyomenos ( Greek : Αποξυόμενος , plural apoxyomenoi : the "Scraper") is one of the conventional subjects of ancient Greek votive sculpture ; it represents an athlete , caught in the familiar act of scraping sweat and dust from his body with the small curved instrument that the Greeks called a stlengis and the Romans a strigil .
113-781: The most renowned Apoxyomenos in Classical Antiquity was that of Lysippos of Sikyon , the court sculptor of Alexander the Great , made ca 330 BCE. The bronze original is lost, but it is known from its description in Pliny the Elder 's Natural History , which relates that the Roman general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa installed Lysippos's masterpiece in the Baths of Agrippa that he erected in Rome , around 20 BCE. Later,
226-434: A res publica as long as it continued to use Latin as its official language. Rome acquired imperial character de facto from the 130s BC with the acquisition of Cisalpine Gaul , Illyria , Greece and Hispania , and definitely with the addition of Iudaea , Asia Minor and Gaul during the 1st century BC. At the time of the empire's maximal extension during the reign of Trajan (AD 117), Rome controlled
339-472: A central part of what was called the Palace Square. The Palace Square served as St. Petersburg's nerve center by linking it to all the city's most important buildings. The presence of the Palace Square was extremely significant to the urban development of St. Petersburg, and while it became less of a nerve center later into the 20th century, its symbolic value was still very much preserved. Catherine acquired
452-613: A collection of 119 paintings in Paris from Count Baudouin in 1781. Catherine's favorite items to collect were believed to be engraved gems and cameos. At the inaugural exhibit of the Hermitage, opened by Charles, Prince of Wales in November 2000, there was an entire gallery devoted to representing and displaying Catherine's favorite items. In this gallery her cameos are displayed along with cabinet made by David Roentgen, which holds her engraved gems. As
565-551: A hermit or recluse. The word derives from Old French hermit , ermit "hermit, recluse", from Late Latin eremita , from Greek eremites , that means "people who live alone", which is in turn derived from ἐρημός ( erēmos ), "desert". Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from
678-727: A result of the crisis of the third century . During Late antiquity Christianity became increasingly popular, finally ousting the Roman imperial cult with the Theodosian decrees of 393. Successive invasions of Germanic tribes finalized the weakening of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century, while the Eastern Roman Empire persisted throughout the Middle Ages , in a state called Romania by its citizens, and designated
791-623: A series of conflicts of the 4th and 3rd centuries, the Samnite Wars , Latin War , and Pyrrhic War . Roman victory in the Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars established Rome as a super-regional power by the 2nd century BC, followed by the acquisition of Greece and Asia Minor . This tremendous increase of power was accompanied by economic instability and social unrest, resulting in the Catiline conspiracy ,
904-492: A true contrapposto , with an arm outstretched to create a sense of movement and interest from a range of viewing angles. Pliny also mentioned treatments of this motif by Polykleitos and by his pupil or follower, Daidalos of Sicyon , who seems to have produced two variants on the theme. A fragmentary bronze statue of the Polycleitan/Sikyonian type, who holds his hands low to clean the sweat and dust from his left hand,
1017-525: Is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg , Russia. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky . The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day . It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th in their list of
1130-588: Is displayed in the General Staff Building (Saint Petersburg) . It features Matisse , Derain and other fauvists , Picasso , Malevich , Petrocelli , Kandinsky , Giacomo Manzù , Giorgio Morandi and Rockwell Kent . A large room is devoted to the German Romantic art of the 19th century, including several paintings by Caspar David Friedrich . The second floor of the Western wing features collections of
1243-517: Is now closed. The rooms and galleries along the southern facade and in the western wing of the New Hermitage are now entirely devoted to Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting of the 17th century, including the large collections of Van Dyck , Rubens and Rembrandt . The first floor rooms on the southern facade of the Winter Palace are occupied by the collections of German fine art of
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#17328686956161356-769: Is the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games , in 776 BC. The Phoenicians originally expanded from ports in Canaan , by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean . Carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had established strongholds in Sicily , Italy and Sardinia , which created conflicts of interest with Etruria . A stele found in Kition , Cyprus commemorates
1469-463: Is the standard version in textbooks. The sculpture, slightly larger than lifesize, is characteristic of the new canon of proportion pioneered by Lysippos, with a slightly smaller head (1:8 of the total height, rather than the 1:7 of Polykleitos ) and longer and thinner limbs. Pliny notes a remark that Lysippos "used commonly to say" that while other artists "made men as they really were, he made them as they appeared to be." Lysippus poses his subject in
1582-805: The Alexander Palace , the Stroganov Palace , and the Yusupov Palace , as well as from other palaces of Saint Petersburg and suburbs. In 1922, a collection of 19th-century European paintings was transferred to the Hermitage from the Academy of Arts . In turn, in 1927 about 500 important paintings were transferred to the Central Museum of old Western art in Moscow at the insistence of the Soviet authorities. In 1928,
1695-543: The Byzantine Empire by later historians. Hellenistic philosophy was succeeded by continued development of Platonism and Epicureanism , with Neoplatonism in due course influencing the theology of the Christian Church Fathers . Many writers have attempted to name a specific date for the symbolic "end" of antiquity, with the most prominent dates being the deposing of the last Western Roman Emperor in 476,
1808-597: The Byzantine Papacy . The Eastern Roman empire's capital city Constantinople remained the only unconquered large urban site of the original Roman empire, as well as being the largest city in Europe. Yet many classical books, sculptures, and technologies survived there along with classical Roman cuisine and scholarly traditions, well into the Middle Ages, when much of it was "rediscovered" by visiting Western crusaders. Indeed,
1921-513: The Catholic Church in particular maintained Latin language, culture, and literacy for centuries; to this day the popes are termed Pontifex Maximus which during the classical period was a title belonging to the emperor, and the ideal of Christendom continued the legacy of a united European civilization even after its political unity had ended. The political idea of an Emperor in the West to match
2034-589: The Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace has been open to the public. In 2003, the Hermitage loaned 142 pieces to the University of Michigan Museum of Art for an exhibition titled The Romanovs Collect: European Art from the Hermitage . In December 2004, the museum discovered another looted work of art: Venus Disarming Mars by Rubens was once in the collection of the Rheinsberg Palace near Berlin, and
2147-507: The Greek revival style in the early 1850s, using painted polished stucco and columns of natural marble and granite . The Room of the Great Vase in the western wing features the 2.57 m (8.4 ft) high Kolyvan Vase, weighing 19 t (42,000 lb), made of jasper in 1843 and installed before the walls were erected. While the western wing was designed for exhibitions, the rooms on
2260-456: The Late Bronze Age collapse . The 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely protohistorical , with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing during the first half of the 8th century. The legendary poet Homer is usually assumed to have lived during the 8th or 7th century BC, and his lifetime is often considered as the beginning of classical antiquity. During the same period
2373-560: The Menshikov Palace , Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky . Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre —are all open to
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#17328686956162486-563: The Muslim conquests of the 7th century finalized the irreversible loss of all the largest Eastern Roman imperial cities besides the capital itself. The emperor Heraclius in Constantinople , who reigned during this period, conducted his court in Greek, not Latin, though Greek had always been an administrative language of the eastern Roman regions. Eastern-Western associations weakened with the ending of
2599-523: The Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace and lasted a year. Of the paintings, all but one originated from private rather than state German collections, including 56 paintings from the Otto Krebs collection, as well as the collection of Bernhard Koehler and paintings previously belonging to Otto Gerstenberg and his daughter Margarete Scharf, including the world-famous Place de la Concorde by Degas , In
2712-552: The Red Army in Germany in 1945 were held in the Hermitage. But only in October 1994 did the Hermitage officially announce that it had secretly been holding a major trove of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings from German private collections. The exhibition "Hidden Treasures Revealed", where 74 of the paintings were displayed for the first time, was opened on 30 March 1995 in
2825-589: The Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, resulting the integration of Latins and Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, though settlements on the Palatine Hill may date back to the 10th century BC. According to legend, the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus . As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and
2938-755: The Social War and the First Triumvirate , and finally the transformation to the Roman Empire during the latter half of the 1st century BC. The precise end of the Republic is disputed by modern historians; Roman citizens of the time did not recognize that the Republic had ceased to exist. The early Julio-Claudian Emperors maintained that the res publica still existed, albeit protected by their extraordinary powers, and would eventually return to its earlier Republican form. The Roman state continued to term itself
3051-504: The Uffizi had led earlier scholars to posit a classical fifth-century original, before the bronze was unearthed at Ephesus. A substantially complete bronze Apoxyomenos of this model, who strigilates his left hand, held close to his thigh, was discovered by René Wouten from the northern Adriatic Sea between two islets, Vele Orjule and Kozjak, near Lošinj in Croatia , in 1996. Rene Wouten found
3164-506: The Western , and through it, the modern world. Surviving fragments of classical culture helped produce a revival beginning during the 14th century which later came to be known as the Renaissance , and various neo-classical revivals occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries. The earliest period of classical antiquity occurs during a time of gradual resurgence of historical sources after
3277-584: The classical orders of architecture. The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas was derived largely from that of Aristotle , despite the intervening change in religion from Hellenic Polytheism to Christianity . Greek and Roman authorities such as Hippocrates and Galen formed the basis of the practice of medicine even longer than Greek thought prevailed in philosophy. In the French theater , playwrights such as Molière and Racine wrote plays on mythological or classical historical subjects and subjected them to
3390-478: The end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. Such a wide span of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. Classical antiquity may also refer to an idealized vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe 's words, "the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome". The culture of the ancient Greeks , together with some influences from the ancient Near East ,
3503-475: The most visited art museums , with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items (the numismatic collection accounts for about one-third of them). The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment , including the Winter Palace , a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them,
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3616-599: The red-figure style , developed by the Andokides Painter in about 530 BC. Greek colonisation refers to the expansion of Archaic Greeks , particularly during the 8th–6th centuries BC , across the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea . The Etruscans had established political control in the region by the late 7th-century BC, forming the aristocratic and monarchial elite. The Etruscans apparently lost power in
3729-534: The 13th to the 20th centuries. Since 1940, the Egyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and including the former Castiglione Collection, has occupied a large hall on the ground floor in the eastern part of the Winter Palace. The collection of classical antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage buildings. The interiors of the ground floor were designed by German architect Leo von Klenze in
3842-410: The 16th century and French fine art of the 15th–18th centuries, including paintings by Poussin , Lorrain , Watteau . The collections of French decorative and applied art from the 17th–18th centuries and British applied and fine art from the 16th–19th century, including Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds , are on display in nearby rooms facing the courtyard . The richly decorated interiors of
3955-468: The 16th–18th centuries, including Veronese , Giambattista Pittoni , Tintoretto , Velázquez and Murillo . The Knights' Hall, a large room in the eastern part of the New Hermitage originally designed in the Greek revival style for the display of coins, now hosts a collection of Western European arms and armour from the 15th–17th centuries, part of the Hermitage Arsenal collection. The Gallery of
4068-562: The 19th century. John Milton and even Arthur Rimbaud received their first poetic educations in Latin. Genres like epic poetry, pastoral verse, and the frequent use of characters and themes from Greek mythology affected Western literature greatly. In architecture, there have been several Greek Revivals , which seem more inspired in retrospect by Roman architecture than Greek. Washington, DC has many large marble buildings with façades made to look like Greek temples , with columns constructed in
4181-631: The Dark Ages). In pottery, the Archaic period sees the development of the Orientalizing style , which signals a shift from the geometric style of the later Dark Ages and the accumulation of influences derived from Egypt, Phoenicia and Syria . Pottery styles associated with the later part of the Archaic age are the black-figure pottery , which originated in Corinth during the 7th-century BC and its successor,
4294-589: The Eastern Roman capital ( first in 674–78 and then in 717–18 ) severed the economic, cultural, and political links that had traditionally united the classical cultures around the Mediterranean, ending antiquity (see Pirenne Thesis ). The original Roman Senate continued to express decrees into the late 6th century, and the last Eastern Roman emperor to use Latin as the language of his court in Constantinople
4407-569: The Emperor in the East continued after the Western Roman Empire's collapse; it was revived by the coronation of Charlemagne in 800; the self-described Holy Roman Empire ruled central Europe until 1806. The Renaissance idea that the classical Roman virtues had been lost as a result of medievalism was especially powerful in European politics of the 18th and 19th centuries. Reverence for Roman republicanism
4520-661: The French in Kassel during the war. The Hermitage collection of Rembrandts was then considered the largest in the world. Also among Alexander's purchases from Josephine's estate were the first four sculptures by the neoclassical Italian sculptor Antonio Canova to enter the Hermitage collection. Between 1840 and 1843, Vasily Stasov redesigned the interiors of the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. In 1838, Nicholas I commissioned
4633-402: The Garden by Renoir , and White House at Night by Van Gogh . Some of the paintings are now on permanent display in several small rooms in the northeastern corner of the Winter Palace on the first floor. In 1993, the Russian government gave the eastern wing of the nearby General Staff Building across the Palace Square to the Hermitage and the new exhibition rooms in 1999. Since 2003,
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4746-418: The Great in 323 BC. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias , son of Peisistratos . Cleomenes I , king of Sparta, established a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras . The Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BC), concluded by the Peace of Callias ended with not only the liberation of Greece, Macedon , Thrace , and Ionia from Persian rule , but also with
4859-470: The Greeks. Fathers had great power over their children, and husbands over their wives. In fact, the word family, familia in Latin, actually referred to those who were subject to the authority of a male head of household. This included non-related members such as slaves and servants. By marriage, both men and women shared property. Divorce was allowed first during the first century BC and could be done by either man or woman. The Roman Empire began to weaken as
4972-407: The Hermitage and later donated them to form a nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (see also Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings ). With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, before the Siege of Leningrad started, two trains with a considerable part of the collections were evacuated to Sverdlovsk . Two bombs and a number of shells hit the museum buildings during
5085-412: The Hermitage foundation decided to create a further branch in Italy with the launch of a national bid. Several northern Italian cities expressed interest such as Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Turin. In 2007, the honor was awarded to the city of Ferrara which proposed its Castle Estense as the base. Since then, the new institution called Ermitage Italia started a research and scientific collaboration with
5198-491: The Hermitage. From 1787 to 1792, Quarenghi designed and built a wing along the Winter Canal with the Raphael Loggias to replicate the loggia in the Apostolic Palace in Rome designed by Donato Bramante and frescoed by Raphael. Catherine's collection of at least 4,000 paintings came to rival the older and more prestigious museums of Western Europe. Catherine took great pride in her collection and actively participated in extensive competitive art gathering and collecting that
5311-433: The History of Ancient Painting adjoins the Knights' Hall and also flanks the skylight rooms. It was designed by Leo von Klenze in the Greek revival style as a prelude to the museum and features neoclassical marble sculptures by Antonio Canova and his followers. In the middle, the gallery opens to the main staircase of the New Hermitage, which served as the entrance to the museum before the October Revolution of 1917, but
5424-500: The Oriental art (from China, India, Mongolia, Tibet, Central Asia, Byzantium and Near East). Catherine the Great started her art collection in 1764 by purchasing paintings from Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky . He assembled the collection for Frederick II of Prussia , who ultimately refused to purchase it. Thus, Gotzkowsky provided 225 or 317 paintings (conflicting accounts list both numbers), mainly Flemish and Dutch, as well as others, including 90 not precisely identified, to
5537-505: The Pavilion Hall in the Northern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage from 1851 to 1858. In 1861, the Hermitage purchased from the Papal government part of the Giampietro Campana collection, which consisted mostly classical antiquities. These included over 500 vases, 200 bronzes and a number of marble statues. The Hermitage acquired Madonna Litta , which was then attributed to Leonardo, in 1865, and Raphael's Connestabile Madonna in 1870. In 1884 in Paris, Alexander III of Russia acquired
5650-486: The Russian crown. The collection consisted of Rembrandt (13 paintings), Rubens (11 paintings), Jacob Jordaens (7 paintings), Anthony van Dyck (5 paintings), Paolo Veronese (5 paintings), Frans Hals (3 paintings, including Portrait of a Young Man with a Glove ), Raphael (2 paintings), Holbein (2 paintings), Titian (1 painting), Jan Steen ( The Idlers ), Hendrik Goltzius , Dirck van Baburen , Hendrick van Balen and Gerrit van Honthorst . Perhaps some of
5763-413: The Senate and had Superbus and the monarchy expelled from Rome in 510 BC. After Superbus' expulsion, the Senate in 509 BC voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government . The classical period of Ancient Greece corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, in particular, from the end of the Athenian tyranny in 510 BC to the death of Alexander
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#17328686956165876-664: The Small Hermitage from the Northern to Southern Pavilion house an exhibition of Western European decorative and applied art from the 12th to 15th century and the fine art of the Low Countries from the 15th and 16th centuries. The rooms on the first floor of the Old Hermitage were designed by Andrei Stakenschneider in revival styles in between 1851 and 1860, although the design survives only in some of them. They feature works of Italian Renaissance artists, including Giorgione , Titian , Veronese , as well as Benois Madonna and Madonna Litta attributed to Leonardo da Vinci or his school. The Italian Renaissance galleries continues in
5989-478: The Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the " Hermitage Theatre ", and the " Winter Palace ", the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to the General Staff Building on the Palace Square facing the Winter Palace, and the Menshikov Palace . The Western European Art collection includes European paintings, sculpture, and applied art from
6102-404: The Small Hermitage. During the time of Catherine, the Hermitage was not a public museum and few people were allowed to view its holdings. Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe also rebuilt rooms in the second story of the south-east corner block that was originally built for Elizabeth and later occupied by Peter III . The largest room in this particular apartment was the Audience Chamber (also called
6215-551: The Soviet government ordered the Hermitage to compile a list of valuable works of art for export. From 1930 to 1934, over two thousand works of art from the Hermitage collection were clandestinely sold at auctions abroad or directly to foreign officials and businesspeople. The sold items included Raphael 's Alba Madonna , Titian 's Venus with a Mirror , and Jan van Eyck 's Annunciation , among other world known masterpieces by Botticelli , Rembrandt , Van Dyck , and others. In 1931 Andrew W. Mellon acquired 21 works of art from
6328-497: The Throne Hall) which consisted of 227 square meters. The Hermitage buildings served as a home and workplace for nearly a thousand people, including the Imperial family. In addition to this, they also served as an extravagant showplace for all kinds of Russian relics and displays of wealth prior to the art collections. Many events were held in these buildings including masquerades for the nobility, grand receptions and ceremonies for state and government officials. The "Hermitage complex"
6441-409: The Winter Palace, features jewellery from the Pontic steppes , Caucasus and Asia, in particular Scythian and Sarmatian gold. Pavilion Hall, designed by Andrei Stackenschneider in 1858, occupies the first floor of the Northern Pavilion in the Small Hermitage. It features the 18th-century golden Peacock Clock by James Cox and a collection of mosaics . Two galleries spanning the west side of
6554-420: The Winter Palace, the former Imperial residence, were proclaimed state museums and eventually merged. The range of the Hermitage's exhibits was further expanded when private art collections from several palaces of the Russian Tsars and numerous private mansions were nationalized and redistributed among major Soviet state museums. Particularly notable was the influx of old masters from the Catherine Palace ,
6667-412: The area by the late 6th-century BC, and at this time, the Italic tribes reinvented their government by creating republics , with greater restraints on the ability of individual rulers to exercise power. According to legend, Rome was founded on 21 April 753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas , Romulus and Remus . As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited
6780-427: The arts. Using the title Catherine the Minerva, she created new institutions of literature and culture and also participated in many projects of her own, mostly play writing. The representation of Catherine alongside Minerva would come to be a tradition of enlightened patronage in Russia. In 1815, Alexander I of Russia purchased 38 pictures from the heirs of Joséphine de Beauharnais , most of which had been looted by
6893-446: The best collections offered for sale by the heirs of prominent collectors. In 1769, she purchased Brühl 's collection, consisting of over 600 paintings and a vast number of prints and drawings, in Saxony . Three years later, she bought Crozat 's collection of paintings in France with the assistance of Denis Diderot . Next, in 1779, she acquired the collection of 198 paintings that once belonged to Robert Walpole in London followed by
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#17328686956167006-461: The bronze statue fully covered in sponges and sea life. No parts of the statue were missing, though its head was disconnected from the body. 1.92m long, the statue is currently thought to be a Hellenistic copy of Lysippos’ Apoxyomenos from the second or first century BCE. Following its removal from the sea bed, the conservation and restoration works on the statue were entrusted to the Croatian Restoration Institute in Zagreb and lasted 6 years, after which
7119-430: The building. In her lifetime, Catherine acquired 4,000 paintings from the old masters, 38,000 books, 10,000 engraved gems, 10,000 drawings, 16,000 coins and medals, and a natural history collection filling two galleries, so in 1771 she commissioned Yury Felten to build another major extension. The neoclassical building was completed in 1787 and has come to be known as the Large Hermitage or Old Hermitage. Catherine also gave
7232-401: The closing of the last Platonic Academy in Athens by the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I in 529, and the conquest of much of the Mediterranean by the new Muslim faith from 634 to 718. These Muslim conquests, of Syria (637), Egypt (639), Cyprus (654), North Africa (665), Hispania (718), Southern Gaul (720), Crete (820), and Sicily (827), Malta (870), as well as the sieges of
7345-407: The collection of Alexander Basilewski , featuring European medieval and Renaissance artifacts. In 1885, the Arsenal collection of arms and armour, founded by Alexander I of Russia , was transferred from the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo to the Hermitage. In 1914, Leonardo's Benois Madonna was added to the collection. Immediately after the Revolution of 1917, the Imperial Hermitage and
7458-455: The creation of a new Greek state in 1832. After the capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Russian Czars (a title derived from Caesar) claimed the Byzantine legacy as the champion of Orthodoxy ; Moscow was described as the " Third Rome ", and the Czars ruled as divinely appointed Emperors into the 20th century. Despite the fact that the Western Roman secular authority disappeared entirely in Europe, it still left traces. The Papacy and
7571-494: The cultures of Persia , the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah , Central Asia and Egypt . Significant advances were made in the sciences ( geography , astronomy , mathematics , etc.), notably with the followers of Aristotle ( Aristotelianism ). The Hellenistic period ended with the increase of the Roman Republic to a super-regional power during the 2nd century BC and the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC. The Republican period of Ancient Rome began with
7684-421: The disappearance of imperial authority in the west. This tendency reached its maximum when Charlemagne was crowned "Roman Emperor" in the year 800, an act which resulted in the formation of the Holy Roman Empire . The notion that an emperor is a monarch who outranks a king dates from this period. In this political ideal, there would always be a Roman Empire, a state the jurisdiction of which extended through
7797-412: The dominance of Athens in the Delian League , which resulted in conflict with Sparta and the Peloponnesian League , resulting in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), ending with a Spartan victory. Greece began the 4th century with Spartan hegemony , but by 395 BC the Spartan rulers dismissed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost its naval supremacy. Athens , Argos , Thebes and Corinth ,
7910-420: The early eighteenth century. Other antiquities in Nani's collection had come from the Peloponnesus ; the Kimball Art Museum suggests that the Nani head may have come from mainland Greece too. The head, like the Croatian Apoxyomenos , has lips that were originally veneered with copper and his eyes were inlaid in glass, stone, and copper. Another half-dozen fragments of the Croatian/Kimball type suggests that this
8023-399: The east of the Winter Palace which he completed in 1766. Later it became the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. From 1767 to 1769, French architect Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe built the Northern Pavilion on the Neva embankment. Between 1767 and 1775, the extensions were connected by galleries, where Catherine put her collections. The entire neoclassical building is now known as
8136-478: The eastern wing of the New Hermitage with paintings, sculpture, majolica and tapestry from Italy of the 15th–16th centuries, including Conestabile Madonna and Madonna with Beardless St. Joseph by Raphael . The first floor of New Hermitage contains three large interior spaces in the center of the museum complex with red walls and lit from above by skylights. These are adorned with 19th-century Russian lapidary works and feature Italian and Spanish canvases of
8249-689: The emperor Tiberius became so enamored of the figure that he had it removed to his bedroom. However, an uproar in the theatre, "Give us back our Apoxyomenos", shamed the emperor into replacing it. The sculpture is commonly represented by the Pentelic marble copy in the Museo Pio-Clementino in Rome, discovered in 1849 when it was excavated in Trastevere ( illustration, right ). Plaster casts of it soon found their way into national academy collections, and it
8362-550: The end of 2006 several of the stolen items had been recovered. In March 2020, Apple released a continuous 5 hour and 19 minute one shot film recorded entirely on an iPhone 11 Pro detailing many rooms of the museum which highlighted not only the artwork, but also the architecture, and live movement pieces interspersed throughout. In recent years, the Hermitage launched several dependencies abroad and domestically. The Hermitage dependency in Kazan ( Tatarstan , Russia), opened in 2005. It
8475-510: The entire Mediterranean as well as Gaul, parts of Germania and Britannia , the Balkans , Dacia , Asia Minor, the Caucasus , and Mesopotamia . Culturally, the Roman Empire was significantly Hellenized , but also incorporated syncretic "eastern" traditions, such as Mithraism , Gnosticism , and most notably Christianity . Classical Rome had vast differences within their family life compared to
8588-573: The entire civilized western world. That model continued to exist in Constantinople for the entirety of the Middle Ages, where the Byzantine Emperor was considered the sovereign of the entire Christian world. The Patriarch of Constantinople was the Empire's highest-ranked cleric, but even he was subordinate to the emperor, who was "God's Vicegerent on Earth". The Greek-speaking Byzantines and their descendants continued to call themselves " Romioi " until
8701-572: The face, by no means a 'classical' type", with its broad, fleshy jaw and short chin and "hair made rough and unruly by sweat and dust". An "excellent copy" of the head, known since the 19th century, is conserved in the Hermitage Museum . Another refined bronze head of an Apoxyomenos of this type (now in the Kimball Art Museum ) had found its way into the collection of Bernardo Nani in Venice in
8814-463: The famous Gonzaga Cameo, Italic art from the 9th to second century BC, Roman marble and bronze sculpture and applied art from the first century BC to fourth century AD, including copies of Classical and Hellenistic Greek sculptures. One of the highlights of the collection is the Tauride Venus , which, according to latest research, is an original Hellenistic Greek sculpture rather than a Roman copy as it
8927-766: The first floor of the Winter Palace on its eastern, northern and western sides are part of the Russian culture collection and host the exhibitions of Russian art from the 11th-19th centuries. French Neoclassical , Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, including works by Renoir , Monet , Van Gogh and Gauguin , are displayed on the fourth floor of the Eastern Wing of the General Staff Building. Also displayed are paintings by Camille Pissarro (Boulevard Montmartre, Paris), Paul Cézanne (Mount Sainte-Victoire), Alfred Sisley , Henri Morel , and Degas . Modern art
9040-515: The former Soviet Union and Russian Empire . Among them is a renowned collection of the art and culture of nomadic tribes of the Altai from Pazyryk and Bashadar sites, including the world's oldest surviving knotted-pile carpet and a well-preserved wooden chariot , both from the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The Caucasian exhibition includes a collection of Urartu artifacts from Armenia and Western Armenia . Many of them were excavated at Teishebaini under
9153-529: The fringes of India . The classical Greek period conventionally ends at the death of Alexander in 323 BC and the fragmentation of his empire, which was at this time divided among the Diadochi . Greece began the Hellenistic period with the increasing power of Macedon and the conquests of Alexander the Great . Greek became the lingua franca far beyond Greece itself, and Hellenistic culture interacted with
9266-485: The ground floor in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage, now also hosting exhibitions, were originally intended for libraries . The collection of classical antiquities features Greek artifacts from the third millennium – fifth century BC, ancient Greek pottery , items from the Greek cities of the North Pontic Greek colonies , Hellenistic sculpture and jewellery, including engraved gems and cameos , such as
9379-543: The inhabitants of Constantinople continued to refer to themselves as Romans, as did their eventual conquerors in 1453, the Ottomans (see Romaioi and Rûm .) The classical scholarship and culture that was still preserved in Constantinople were brought by refugees fleeing its conquest in 1453 and helped to begin the Renaissance (see Greek scholars in the Renaissance ). Ultimately, it was a slow, complex, and graduated change of
9492-571: The interwoven civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known together as the Greco-Roman world , centered on the Mediterranean Basin . It is the period during which ancient Greece and ancient Rome flourished and had major influence throughout much of Europe , North Africa , and West Asia . Conventionally, it is often considered to begin with the earliest recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th-century BC) and ends with
9605-570: The latter two of which were formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War , which ended inconclusively in 387 BC. Later, in 371 BC, the Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a victory at the Battle of Leuctra . The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban hegemony . Thebes sought to maintain its dominance until it
9718-462: The most famous and notable artworks that were a part of Catherine's original purchase from Gotzkowsky were Danaë , painted by Rembrandt in 1636; Descent from the Cross , painted by Rembrandt in 1624; and Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove , painted by Frans Hals in 1650. These paintings remain in the Hermitage collection today. In 1764, Catherine commissioned Yury Felten to build an extension on
9831-645: The name of the Hermitage to her private theatre , built nearby between 1783 and 1787 by the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi . In London in 1787, Catherine acquired the collection of sculpture that belonged to Lyde Browne , mostly Ancient Roman marbles. Catherine used them to adorn the Catherine Palace and park in Tsarskoye Selo , but later they became the core of the Classical Antiquities collection of
9944-518: The neoclassical German architect Leo von Klenze to design a building for the public museum. Space for the museum was made next to the Small Hermitage by the demolition of the Shepelev Palace and royal stables. The construction was overseen by the Russian architects Vasily Stasov and Nikolai Yefimov from 1842 to 1851 and incorporated Quarenghi's wing with the Raphael Loggias. The New Hermitage
10057-722: The overthrow of the Monarchy c. 509 BC and lasted more than 450 years until its subversion through a series of civil wars , into the Principate form of government and the Imperial period. During the half millennium of the Republic, Rome increased from a regional power of the Latium to the dominant force in Italy and beyond. The unification of Italy by the Romans was a gradual process, brought about by
10170-465: The public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace, accessible from the Courtyard. A hermitage is the dwelling of
10283-456: The siege. The museum opened an exhibition in November 1944. In October 1945 the evacuated collections were brought back, and in November 1945 the museum reopened. In 1948, 316 works of Impressionist , post-Impressionist , and modern art from the collection of the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow, originating mostly from the nationalized collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov before
10396-483: The socio-economic structure in European history that resulted in the changeover between classical antiquity and medieval society and no specific date can truly exemplify that. In politics, the late Roman conception of the Empire as a universal state, commanded by one supreme divinely appointed ruler, united with Christianity as a universal religion likewise headed by a supreme patriarch , proved very influential, even after
10509-624: The son-in-law of Servius Tullius , Superbus was of Etruscan birth. It was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock , enraging the people of Rome. The people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia , a patrician Roman, by his own son. Lucretia's kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus (ancestor to Marcus Brutus ), summoned
10622-717: The state, as can be seen in the architecture of the Panthéon , the Arc de Triomphe , and the paintings of Jacques-Louis David . During the revolution, France transitioned from kingdom to republic to dictatorship to Empire (complete with Imperial Eagles) that the Romans had experienced centuries earlier. Classical antiquity is a general term for a long period of cultural history . Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many rather disparate cultures and periods. "Classical antiquity" often refers to an idealized vision of later people, of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe 's words, "the glory that
10735-685: The statue was first exhibited in Zagreb 's Mimara Museum as the Croatian Apoxyomenos . as well as in some of the most important museums worldwide ( Louvre , British Museum , J. Paul Getty Museum ). It is now housed permanently in the Apoxyomenos Museum in Mali Lošinj ( Lussinpiccolo ), in an old palace restored on purpose. It shares with the Ephesus bronze "the almost portrait-like individuality of
10848-428: The strict rules of the classical unities derived from Aristotle's Poetics . The desire to dance in a manner allegedly similar to the manner of the ancient Greeks caused Isadora Duncan to create her brand of ballet . Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum (Russian: Государственный Эрмитаж , romanized : Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž , IPA: [ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ] )
10961-420: The supervision of Boris Piotrovsky , former director of the Hermitage Museum. Four small rooms on the ground floor, enclosed in the middle of the New Hermitage between the room displaying Classical Antiquities, comprise the first treasure gallery, featuring western jewellery from the 4th millennium BC to the early 20th century AD. The second treasure gallery, located on the ground floor in the southwest corner of
11074-497: The symbol of Minerva was frequently used and favored by Catherine to represent her patronage of the arts, a cameo of Catherine as Minerva is also displayed here. This particular cameo was created for her by her daughter-in-law, the Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna . This is only a small representation of Catherine's vast collection of many antique and contemporary engraved gems and cameos. The collection soon overgrew
11187-561: The victory of King Sargon II in 709 BC over the seven kings of the island, marking an important part of the transfer of Cyprus from Tyrian rule to the Neo-Assyrian Empire . The Archaic period followed the Greek Dark Ages , and saw significant advancements in political theory , and the beginnings of democracy , philosophy , theatre , poetry , as well as the revitalization of the written language (which had been lost during
11300-471: The war, were transferred to the Hermitage, including works by Matisse and Picasso . On 15 June 1985, a man later judged insane attacked Rembrandt's painting Danaë , displayed in the museum. He threw sulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with a knife. The restoration of the painting had been accomplished by Hermitage conservationists by 1997, and Danaë is now on display behind armoured glass. In 1991, it became known that some paintings looted by
11413-581: Was Greece , the grandeur that was Rome !" During the 18th and 19th centuries AD, reverence for classical antiquity was much greater in Europe and the United States than it is now. Respect for the ancient people of Greece and Rome affected politics , philosophy , sculpture , literature , theatre , education , architecture , and sexuality . Epic poetry in Latin continued to be written and circulated well into
11526-414: Was a creation of Catherine's that allowed all kinds of festivities to take place in the palace, the theatre and even the museum of the Hermitage. This helped solidify the Hermitage as not only a dwelling place for the Imperial family, but also as an important symbol and memorial to the imperial Russian state. Today, the palace and the museum are one and the same. In Catherine's day, the Winter Palace served as
11639-563: Was apparently looted by Soviet troops from the Königsberg Castle in East Prussia in 1945. At the time, Mikhail Piotrovsky said the painting would be cleaned and displayed. The museum announced in July 2006 that 221 minor items, including jewelry, Orthodox icons, silverware and richly enameled objects, had been stolen. The value of the stolen items was estimated to be approximately $ 543,000. By
11752-636: Was created with support from President of the Republic of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev and is a subdivision of the Kazan Kremlin State Historical and Architectural Museum-Park. The museum is situated in the Kazan Kremlin in an edifice previously occupied by the Junker School built in the beginning of the 19th century. Following the prior experiences in London, Las Vegas , Amsterdam and Kazan,
11865-704: Was emperor Maurice , who reigned until 602. The overthrow of Maurice by his mutinying Danube army commanded by Phocas resulted in the Slavic invasion of the Balkans and the weakening of Balkan and Greek urban culture (resulting in the flight of Balkan Latin speakers to the mountains, see Origin of the Romanians ), and also provoked the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 in which all the great eastern cities except Constantinople were lost. The resulting turmoil did not end until
11978-619: Was excavated in 1896 at the site of Ephesus in Turkey ; it is conserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum , Vienna . Its quality is so fine that scholars have debated whether it is a fourth-century original, in the sense that workshop repetitions are all "originals" or a later copy made during the Hellenistic period. A classicising version in the neo-Attic style in the Medici collections at
12091-647: Was finally ended by the increasing power of Macedon in 346 BC. During the reign of Philip II , (359–336 BC), Macedon expanded into the territory of the Paeonians , the Thracians and the Illyrians . Philip's son, Alexander the Great , (356–323 BC) managed to briefly extend Macedonian power not only over the central Greek city-states but also to the Persian Empire , including Egypt and lands as far east as
12204-651: Was opened to the public on 5 February 1852. In the same year the Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum emerged and was particularly enriched by items given by the Duke of Leuchtenberg , Nicholas I's son-in-law. Meanwhile, from 1851 to 1860, the interiors of the Old Hermitage were redesigned by Andrei Stackensneider to accommodate the State Assembly, Cabinet of Ministers and state apartments. Stakenschneider created
12317-407: Was prevalent in European royal court culture. Through her art collection she gained European acknowledgment and acceptance and portrayed Russia as an enlightened society. Catherine went on to invest much of her identity in being a patron of the arts. She was particularly fond of the Roman deity Minerva, whose characteristics according to classical tradition are military prowess, wisdom, and patronage of
12430-715: Was strong among the Founding Fathers of the United States and the Latin American revolutionaries; the Americans described their new government as a republic (from res publica ) and gave it a Senate and a President (another Latin term), rather than use available English terms like commonwealth or parliament . Similarly in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, republicanism and Roman martial virtues were promoted by
12543-475: Was the basis of art, philosophy, society, and education in the Mediterranean and Near East until the Roman imperial period . The Romans preserved, imitated, and spread this culture throughout Europe, until they were able to compete with it. This Greco-Roman cultural foundation has been immensely influential on the language, politics, law, educational systems, philosophy , science, warfare, literature, historiography, ethics, rhetoric, art and architecture of both
12656-474: Was the more popular apoxyomenos type in Antiquity, and that the famous Vatican Apoxyomenos , which reverses the pose, may be a variant of Lysippus' original. Classical Antiquity Classical antiquity , also known as the classical era , classical period , classical age , or simply antiquity , is the period of cultural European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising
12769-604: Was thought before. There are, however, only a few pieces of authentic Classical Greek sculpture and sepulchral monuments. On the ground floor in the western wing of the Winter Palace the collections of prehistoric artifacts and the culture and art of the Caucasus are located, as well as the second treasure gallery. The prehistoric artifacts date from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age and were excavated all over Russia and other parts of
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