The Hermitage guide

The Department of Western European Art

The early history of the Department of Western European Art may be said to resemble, in some respects, that of St Petersburg-Leningrad itself. Just as the new Russian capital, founded on the barren, swampy banks of the Neva, came to rival the luxury and splendour of Europe’s ancient capitals in a mere two and a half decades, so the collection of works of Western European art, which was started in 1764 — the date traditionally regarded as the year of the Hermitage’s foundation — needed only twenty-five years to attain that wealth and variety which placed it on a par with the most celebrated collections of Western Europe.

Isolated specimens of Western European art had of course found their way into Russia during the preceding periods, especially during the reign of Peter the Great, but consistent and purposeful collecting began only in the second half of the eighteenth century. The earliest acquisitions made by Catherine II were intended to decorate the sumptuous apartments of the huge new Winter Palace. Very soon, however, the palace collection outgrew its decorative function and turned into a veritable art museum, the nucleus of the future Hermitage.

The growth of this museum was indeed astonishingly rapid. Its very first printed catalogue, issued ten years after the collection was founded, listed 2,080 paintings, while only a decade later the picture gallery already contained 2,568 canvases. These works formed not a random assemblage of kunststücke, but a carefully selected collection which included most of the masterpieces that were to bring the Hermitage its world-wide fame. Much of Catherine II’s success in amassing the collection stems from the very circumstances surrounding the first acquisitions. In 1764 she received a consignment of two hundred and twenty-five pictures from the Berlin merchant Gotzkowsky, in payment of his debt to the Russian Treasury. These works, almost exclusively by Dutch and Flemish masters, had been collected for King Friedrich II of Prussia, who, owing to financial difficulties caused by the Seven Years War, was forced to give up the idea of buying them. Having almost unlimited financial resources at her disposal, the Russian empress spared no expense to enlarge her museum.

The rapid growth of the Hermitage in the first years of its existence was also partly due to the condition of the art market at the time. Large numbers of works of art were available for purchase, particularly in Paris, at auctions where treasures once owned by the now impoverished aristocracy were sold off. Agents of the Russian court would attend every sale which seemed to promise valuable acquisitions. It was at one such sale, for instance, that Murillo’s Boy with a Dog was bought. But the highest point was reached when Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son was acquired for the Hermitage.

Much more important for the Museum than the purchase of individual, though renowned canvases, was the acquisition of whole collections, amassed by connoisseurs or art lovers. The first of these was the collection of Heinrich Brühl, bought in 1769 from his heirs in Dresden. Count Brühl, the once omnipotent minister of Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, had been entrusted with the task of acquiring art works for the Dresden picture gallery, and had accumulated an excellent collection of his own, containing paintings, drawings, and engravings. His collection was bought for the Empress, and formed the nucleus of the Hermitage section of Dutch and Flemish paintings, giving it four Rembrandts, four landscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael, and two canvases by Rubens. Other schools were represented in the Brühl collection by single works only, but among these were such masterpieces as The Death of St Joseph by Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Maecenas Presenting the Liberal Arts to Augustus by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and An Embarrassing Proposal by Antoine Watteau.

The Brühl collection of drawings also enriched the Hermitage, bringing to it 1,076 sheets by old and contemporary masters. Added to the 6,000 drawings composing the collection of the Austrian minister, Count Johann Philip Cobenzl, which had been acquired in 1768 in Brussels, they laid the foundation of the Department’s present section of drawings.

The most impressive was the purchase, in 1772, of one of the finest private collections in Paris, assembled by Pierre Crozat. It included such masterpieces as The Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho by Lucas van Leyden, Judith by Giorgione, Pietà by Paolo Veronese, Bacchus by Rubens, Tavern Scene by Adriaen Brouwer and Danaë by Rembrandt. The Crozat collection, with its seven Rembrandts, eight Rubens, and several splendid portraits by Van Dyck, substantially enriched the Museum’s Flemish and Dutch sections. It also raised the standard of the Italian collection, adding to it works by Raphael, Tintoretto, and Fetti, while canvases by Nicolas Poussin, Louis Le Nain, Pierre Mignard, Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, Nicolas de Lar-gillière, and Siméon Chardin formed the basis of the Hermitage collection of French paintings.

Substantial additions came to the Hermitage in 1779 with the acquisition of the famous Houghton Hall collection. Accumulated by Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister under two successive monarchs, George I and George II, it numbered 198 paintings, including The Carters by Rubens, Bird Concert by Snyders, all of Van Dyck’s English portraits, four paintings by Salvator Rosa, and canvases by Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Guido Reni, Carlo Maratti, and other Dutch, Flemish, and Italian artists. The sale of the Walpole collection caused much public concern in England. The question was voiced in Parliament, and vain attempts were made to prevent its departure from the country after Count Moussine-Pushkin, Russian ambassador to London, had paid 36,000 pounds for it to Robert Walpole’s heirs.

But perhaps the decisive factor in the formation of the Museum at its early stage was the contribution of outstanding eighteenth-century art experts. Catherine II succeeded in enlisting for her museum the services of the philosopher and art critic Dénis Diderot, the encyclopedist Melchior Grimm, the sculptor Étienne-Maurice Falconet, and the collector François Tronchin. Yet one can hardly overestimate the role played in augmenting the stocks of the Hermitage by Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, one of the most enlightened men of his time and Russian ambassador to Paris and later The Hague. Suffice it to mention that the Crozat collection was bought on Golitsyn’s initiative, through the mediation of Diderot and Tronchin, and that it was thanks to Golitsyn that the Hermitage came into the possession of the Cobenzl collection, a number of paintings from the Jean de Jullienne collection, and many other pictures. Some of the Hermitage acquisitions had a rather peculiar history. Thus, for example, Landscape with Polyphemus by Poussin was purchased by Diderot from the Marquis de Conflans who, having gambled away a fortune, and being in desperate need of money, had offered the picture to Diderot.

Another factor which contributed to the growth of the Museum’s collections was the establishment of links with active contemporary artists. This helped the Hermitage obtain works by well-known masters of the second half of the eighteenth century: Still Life with the Attributes of the Arts by Chardin, which was brought to St Petersburg by Falconet, and paintings by François Boucher, Louis Michel van Loo, Joseph Marie Vien, Joshua Reynolds, Pompeo Batoni, Anton Raffaël Mengs, Jacob Philipp Hackaert, and Angelica Kauffmann.

Apart from the palace collection of the tsars, many large private collections came into being in Russia at that time. Although inferior to that of the Hermitage, they nevertheless often contained first-rate works of art. Some of them entered the Museum as far back as the late eighteenth century, following the death of their owners, such as the collection of Potiomkin-Tavrichesky, of Lanskoi — owner of the famous collection once formed by Count Baudoin, Friedrich’s court banker — and of Teplov; but most found their way into the Hermitage only after the October Revolution.

It should be pointed out, however, that the interest which Russian society evinced in art was not limited to painting alone. The imperial collection embraced diverse works of art, some housed in the Winter Palace, others in different town and country residencies, and was constantly enriched with specimens of Western European sculpture and applied arts. While objets d'art were used as a rule for the decoration of the palaces’ halls and private suites, sculptures, by contrast, were looked upon at that time as museum exhibits.

The acquisition, in 1785, of the Lyde Browne collection in England turned out to be especially fortunate. The collection, composed in Italy almost exclusively of relics of antique art, also contained some Western European sculptures. It was with the Lyde Browne collection that Michelangelo’s Crouching Boy, his only work to be found in the Soviet Union, reached Russia. Originally intended for the Medici tomb in the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, it was not included into the final plan of its decoration. The Lyde Browne collection was placed in the Grotto, a garden pavilion in Tsarskoye Selo, and was transferred to the Hermitage at the end of the nineteenth century. The Grotto also housed the famous statue of Voltaire. Catherine II for a long time kept up a lively correspondence with the celebrated French philosopher, and in 1781 commissioned a sculpture of him from Jean-Antoine Houdon. After Voltaire’s library was purchased and placed in the halls of the Winter Palace, the statue was installed there.

The superb collection of Abbot Filippo Farsetti, a patron of the arts from Venice, had travelled a long way before it reached the Museum. Its finest items were terra-cotta bozzetti (sketches and models) by Lorenzo Bernini and many other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian sculptors. After the Abbot’s death, the collection passed into the hands of his nephew, Antonio Farsetti, who was Knight Commander of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Malta. Desirous of strengthening his position in St Petersburg after his arrival there, Farsetti presented this collection to Paul I, recently elected Grand Master of the Order of the Knights of Malta. On Paul’s instructions the sculptures were transferred to the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg where they remained until 1919 when the entire collection went to the Hermitage.

In 1808 Franz Labensky, Keeper of the Hermitage picture gallery from 1797 to 1849, was fortunate enough to make several extremely valuable acquisitions in Paris, including Caravaggio’s Lute Player (previously part of the celebrated Justiniani collection), and some canvases by Dutch and French masters, particularly Pieter de Hooch and Philippe de Champagne. The Hermitage’s Italian section also benefited from the purchases made by Labensky in 1840—11 in Paris through the mediation of Vivant Denon, director of the Louvre, and by Adjutant General Trubetskoi in 1819 in Italy. These were paintings by Francesco Bassano, Carlo Maratti, and Carlo Dolci.

The major highlight in the history of the Museum in the first quarter of the nineteenth century was undoubtedly the acquisition of the Malmaison collection of Empress Josephine, the first wife of Napoleon. Composed of the spoils of the Napoleonic wars (most of its paintings previously belonged to the famous Cassel Gallery), the Malmaison collection enriched the Hermitage with 118 canvases by Dutch, Flemish, and French artists, including Rembrandt, Rubens, Claude Lorrain (his Times of Day series), Gerard Terborch, Gabriel Metsu, and David Teniers. Also included in the collection were several noteworthy samples of French sculpture of the Napoleonic period by Denis Antoine Chaudet, François Joseph Bozio, and some works by Antonio Canova.

In 1814—15 the Amsterdam collection of the English banker Coesvelt was bought. Its main attraction were the pictures of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish school hitherto represented in the Museum only by a few Murillos. The Coesvelt collection brought in paintings by almost all major Spanish masters, including Francisco Zurbaran, Francisco Ribalta, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, Antonio Pereda, and Diego Velazquez.

The interest in Spanish painting which marked the entire first half of the nineteenth century, and the availability on the art market of a considerable number of Spanish pictures, enabled the Hermitage to enlarge its section of Spanish art within a very short period of time. In 1829, at the sale of paintings belonging to Empress Josephine’s daughter, the Duchess of Saint-Leu (who owned a part of the Malmaison collection), a José Ribera was acquired for the Hermitage. Purchased in 1831 in Paris, at the sale of the picture gallery of Manuel de Godoy, Minister of Charles IV of Spain, were several works by Ribalta and Murillo, and the earliest of Ribera’s signed canvases, St Jerome Listening to the Sound of the Trumpet. In 1834 the Museum’s Spanish section was augmented by paintings from the collection of General Gessler, Russian consul-general in Cadiz, and Paez de la Cadena, Spanish ambassador to St Petersburg. In 1845 the Russian diplomat Dmitry Tatishchev bequeathed to the Hermitage his collection of pictures, amassed in Italy, Spain, and Austria, which included Madonna and Child by Morales. And, finally, in 1852 Zurbaran’s St Lawrence bought at the sale of the Marshal Soult collection in Paris, found its way to St Petersburg.

In 1850, through the mediation of the Russian consul-general in Venice, Khvostov, the gallery of the Barbarigo Palace was acquired, adding to the Hermitage collection six of its eight Titians, among them St Sebastian. In the same year Fiodor Bruni, Keeper of the Hermitage picture gallery, attended the sale of the King Willem II’s collection in The Hague, where he bought a number of canvases by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Netherlandish masters who had hitherto been represented in the Museum by single works only. Among the new entries was St Luke Drawing a Portrait oj the Virgin by Rogier van der Weyden, actually half of a panel once sawn in two. The panel was restored in 1884 when, by a fortunate coincidence, its other half also reached the Hermitage.

In the second half of the nineteenth century the rate of the Museum’s growth slowed down. Individual entries coming mainly from, or with, Russian collections (in 1886, for example, the Golitsyn Museum in Moscow contributed seventy-three pictures by Italian, Flemish, and Dutch artists) did not introduce any fundamental changes into the picture gallery or affect its general character. It was, however, at this time that the Museum received two world-famed masterpieces: The Litta Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci, bought in 1866 from the Duke of Litta in Milan, and The Conestabile Madonna, an exceptionally rare work of the seventeen-year-old Raphael, purchased in 1870 from Count Conestabile in Perugia. Raphael’s masterpiece, though, did not immediately find its way to the Hermitage; it was presented by Alexander II to the Empress and graced her apartments in the Winter Palace up to 1880.

The growth of the collection of Western European sculpture in the mid-nineteenth century was connected with the erection of the New Hermitage. The first floor of the new building was intended from the start to accommodate a picture gallery, and neither its architectural design, nor its decorative finish would admit of a lavish use of furniture, tapestries, porcelains, and other objects of applied art. such as generally adorn palatial halls. The exhibition rooms of the New Hermitage were therefore decorated with sculptures brought from urban and country palaces and parks, where they had been accumulated since the eighteenth century. In addition, a number of works by contemporary scupltors were bought — Lorenzo Bartolini, Giovanni Duprè, Christian Daniel Rauch, Emil Wolf, and others — works which today increasingly attract the attention of scholars. In the following years the section of Western European sculpture benefited considerably from the acquisition of the Demidov and Laval collections.

A very significant event in the history of the Department of Western European Art took place in 1885. It was the establishment of its medieval and Renaissance sections. The collections which comprised these sections incorporated a sizable stock of objects deriving from a variety of sources. Thus, the splendid silver monstrance, a fifteenth-century work by Hans Rissenberger of Tallinn, especially interesting because it was signed, came from the St Petersburg Kunstkammer or Cabinet of Curios, where it had been kept since 1725. The collection of arms and armour, as well as a part of the above-mentioned Tatishchev collection that included some early stained glass panels, arrived from the Arsenal at Tsarskoye Selo, where it had been housed since 1811. But the nucleus of the new section was formed by the remarkable collection of sculpture and objects of applied art from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, built up by the Russian merchant Basilewsky in Paris in the 1760s and 70s and purchased for the Hermitage in 1884. A subtle connoisseur of art, whose enormous fortune enabled him to indulge freely in his passion for collecting, Basilewsky relied in his choice of art objects not only on his own erudition and taste but also on the opinion of the foremost experts of the age. His collection was distinguished for its exceptionally high artistic standard, and was justly regarded as an assemblage of masterpieces. It contained a great variety of bone carvings and metalwork — including the silver figure of St Etienne as a Deacon and the magnificent Freiburg Cross — painted and champlevé enamels, Hispano-Moresque and Italian majolicas (the famous Fortuni vase and the plate by Nicolò Pellipario), Venetian glass, French faiences, and many other things illustrative of practically every branch of applied art and artistic crafts of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Basilewsky collection was equally rich in Italian, German, and Netherlandish sculpture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, among which the figure of the Mourner by Jean de Cambrai, the Netherlandish sculptor of the early fifteenth century, stands out by its wonderful expressiveness. And, finally, the Golitsyn Museum collection of twelfth- to sixteenth-century applied art entered the Hermitage, making its collection one of the best in the world.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the Hermitage picture gallery was headed by two well-known Russian art historians, Ernest von Liphart and James Schmidt. They were able to make some quite valuable acquisitions and to enliven the work of the Museum so substantially that this could not fail to attract the public eye. Art collectors began to donate or bequeath their pictures to the Hermitage. That was how El Greco’s St Peter and St Paul came to the Museum from the Durnovo collection, and the famous eighteenth-century English portraits, among them Gainsborough’s Lady in Blue, from the Khitrovo collection. Of great value for the enlargement of the gallery’s Italian section was the acquisition, in 1911, of several pictures from Grigory Stroganov’s Roman collection, including the Madonna from the Annunciation by Simone Martini, an excellent specimen of Italian art in the first half of the fourteenth century, and several canvases from Paul Stroganov’s St Petersburg collection.

Liphart and Schmidt were also instrumental in obtaining for the Museum the collection of Semionov-Tien-Shansky, the celebrated Russian traveller and scholar. This collection, highly renowned among connoisseurs of art, brought in nearly seven hundred pictures by Flemish and Dutch masters, making the Hermitage one of the world’s most important and comprehensive repositories of Flemish and Dutch painting.

It is also Liphart to whom the Hermitage owes its second Da Vinci masterpiece, The Benois Madonna. This picture had been in the collection of Sapozhnikov, an Astrakhan businessman, since the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was, however, only in 1908 that the work was identified as an early Leonardo. Liphart needed all his perseverance to refute doubts concerning the picture’s authenticity and to secure its purchase from the Benois collection in 1914.

The Great October Revolution opened up new vistas before the Hermitage. As a result of the policy laid down by the state for the preservation of the country’s art treasures, numerous works of art were handed over to the Museum following the nationalization of private collections.

Especially important additions came to the section of applied art from the former royal palaces in Tsarskoye Selo and from the Petrograd mansions of the nobility: the Sheremetevs, Yusupovs, Bobrinskys, Kochubeis, Dolgorukys, and Paskevich. This section also incorporated several large private and museum collections. Most valuable for the Hermitage were that of Botkin, the Russian artist and archaeologist (which included exceptionally fine specimens of medieval and Renaissance art) ; a selection of exhibits from the so-called Koniushenny Museum (Museum of the Imperial Stables), which housed coaches and carriages of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and some rare Gobelin tapestries; the collection of the Museum of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, and the famous collection of the Stieglitz Museum. The latter collection contained remarkable samples of fifteenth- to nineteenth-century furniture, first-rate specimens of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Flemish, German and French tapestry, and a variety of objects in glass, majolica, bone, ivory, and metal. These sources also enriched the Hermitage collection of Western European porcelain, which is represented today by articles from the world’s renowned factories of Meissen, Sèvres, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Vienna, as well as from private and provincial factories. The collections of textiles, embroideries, and other kinds of applied art were enlarged too.

Equally notable was the expansion of the section of drawings which in the nineteenth century had benefited only from the acquisition of minor collections and through donations. Now it came to incorporate the rich collections of graphic works once owned by the Yusupovs, Mordvinovs, and the Stieglitz Museum, as well as the choice collection of S. Yaremich and the finer part of drawings from the Museum of the Academy of Arts. Among the materials from the latter was the Betskoi collection which had been kept in the Academy since 1768 and had gradually fallen into oblivion to be rediscovered only after 1917. The high artistic standard of this collection can be judged by Group Portrait of the Family of the Dukes d’Este by Ercole dei Roberti and Virgin and Child by Albrecht Dürer.

Among the accretions made to the section of Western European sculpture after 1917, the most noteworthy were the above-mentioned Farsetti collection, transferred to the Hermitage from the Museum of the Academy of Arts; the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German and Netherlandish wooden sculptures, and French and Italian bronzes, which came from the museums of the Stieglitz School and the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts; works by Aristide Maillol, Franz Stuck, Max Klinger, and other masters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as sculptures by Étienne-Maurice Falconet, Jean-Antoine Houdon, and Auguste Rodin, all of which were received from the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow. Today the Hermitage collection of sculpture numbers over two thousand items, covering the period from the Middle Ages down to the present day. The collection continues to expand. During recent years, for example, it has been enriched with three works by Matisse, The Large Tragic Mask of Beethoven by Bourdelle, and many other pieces.

For all the exceptional wealth of its collections of paintings by Old Masters, the Hermitage picture gallery had, before 1917, some unfortunate lacunae. These were filled by numerous accessions from the nationalized private collections of Likhachov, the Miatlevs, Olives, Vorontsov-Dashkovs, Moussine-Pushkin, Paskevich, the Gagarins, Gorchakovs, Nikolai Roerich, Repnin, and Argutinsky-Dolgorukov. During the 1920s other well-known collections found their way to the Hermitage. These came from the Shuvalov, Yusupov, and Stroganov palaces, which had for a short time functioned as independent museums. In addition, various paintings reached the Hermitage from the Marble Palace and the Anichkov and Oldenburg palaces in the city, as well as from the royal residences at Gatchina, Ropsha, Pavlovsk, and Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin). The picture gallery is also indebted for many of its Old Masters to the redistribution of works of art among state-owned collections. Thus, for example, the Russian Museum in Leningrad transferred to the Hermitage some paintings by the Old Masters once owned by the Museum of Christian Antiquities.

Due to these additions it is now possible to follow the development of all the major national schools of painting. The exhibitions are arranged chronologically, with emphasis put on the highest points in the history of Western European art.

The collection of Italian paintings of the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries incorporated several rare works of the thirteenth-century Pisan school; pictures by Ugolino Lorenzetti Nardo di Cione, Spinello Aretino, Filippo Lippi, Alvise Vivarini, Lorenzo Costa, Francesco Francia, Filippino Lippi, Titian, Paolo Veronese, Lorenzo Lotto, Pontormo, Bartolommeo Manfredi, Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, Bernardo Strozzi, Francesco Guardi, Alessandro Magnasco, Bernardo Belotto, Antonio Canaletto, and canvases by many other artists.

Among the works of the Netherlandish, Dutch, and Flemish artists, received by the Museum at that time, were pictures by Hugo van der Goes, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Frans Floris, Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Adriaen Bloemaert, Gerard Terborch, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Salomon Ruysdael, Jacob Ruisdael, Willem Claesz Heda, Aelbert Cuyp, Pieter Claesz Heda, and by artists of the Rembrandt school. Other sections of the gallery also gained by the influx of pictures; outstanding among the new accessions were the works by Francisco Zurbaran, Hans Wertinger, Daniel Schultz, Johann Heinrich Schönfeldt, and a sizable collection of German paintings in which the works of Caspar David Friedrich were especially noteworthy.

Thanks to new acquisitions, the Hermitage was able to create a superb collection of French paintings, which boasts works by nearly all well-known French artists. Its collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French paintings can be compared to that of the Louvre alone.

The collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western European paintings has a completely different history. Its nucleus was formed by the so-called Kushelev Gallery, transferred to the Hermitage in 1922 from the Academy of Arts (where it had come by bequest of Kushelev-Bezborodko), and by a large number of paintings from the former Moscow collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov; these were received by the Hermitage in two stages, in 1930—31 and in 1948, from the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow. Today the exhibition of late nineteenth-century French art is one of the main attractions of the Hermitage. This collection is celebrated for its Monets and Renoirs, its eleven Cézannes, and its canvases by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Maurice Denis, Albert Marquet, André Derain, and Pablo Picasso.

At present new accessions enter the Department of Western European Art mainly through the Hermitage Purchasing Commission, which quite often manages to discover important works. A good example of this is Bellange’s Lamentation. One cannot but mention yet another source of acquisitions — gifts by collectors, artists, and art lovers. Armand Hammer, the American collector, for instance, presented to the Hermitage the Portrait of Antonia Zárate by Francisco Goya; Lydia Delectorskaya sent in from Paris some sculptures and drawings by Matisse; many active artists donate their works to the Museum.

Each of the Department’s exhibits justly deserves those words of high praise which usually convey our emotions when meeting with true masterpieces of art, works that embody the spiritual heritage of mankind.

B. Asvarishch

85

Simone Martini. 1284—1344. Italy

Madonna from the Annunciation

86

Antonio Rosselino. 1427—1478. Italy

Madonna and Child. Marble. 1460s

87

Filippino Lippi. 1457—1504. Italy

Adoration of the Infant Christ. Mid-1480s

88

Lorenzo Lorenzetto. 1490—1541. Italy

Dead Boy on a Dolphin. Marble

89

Michelangelo Buonarroti. 1475—1564. Italy

The Crouching Boy. Marble. After 1530

90

Leonardo da Vinci. 1452—1519. Italy

Madonna with a Flower (The Benois Madonna). 1478

91

Leonardo da Vinci. 1452—1519. Italy

Madonna and Child (The Litta Madonna). 1470s—c. 1490/91

92

Fra Angelico. 1400—1455. Italy

Madonna and Child. 1424—30

93

Raphael (Raffaello Santi). 1483—1520. Italy

The Conestabile Madonna. 1503

94

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio). 1485/90—1576. Italy

St Mary Magdalene in Penitence. 1560s

95

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio). 1485/90—1576. Italy

Christ Pantocraior. 1560s

96

Giorgione (Giorgio da Castelfranco). 1478—1510. Italy

Judith

97

Paolo Veronese. 1528—1588. Italy

Adoration of the Magi. Early 1570s

98

Francesco Guardi. 1712—1793. Italy

View on a Square

99

Piero di Cosimo. 1461/62—c. 1521. Italy

Head Study of an Elderly Man. 1480s

100

Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal). 1697—1768. Italy

The Reception of the French Ambassador in Venice. 1740s

101

Lorenzo Bernini. 1598—1680. Italy

Self-Portrait. Terra-cotta

102

Antonio Canova. 1757—1822. Italy

Hebe. Marble. 1801

103

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. 1571—1610. Italy

The Lute Player. C. 1595

104

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. 1696—1770. Italy

Maecenas Presenting the Liberal Arts to Augustus. C. 1745

105

Silver reliquary in the form of a deacon

France, Ile-de-France. Late 12th century

106

Flask

Majolica. Italy, Urbino. 1556—62

107

Robert Campin. С. 1380—1444. The Netherlands

Madonna and Child at the Fireplace.

Right wing of a diptych

108

Rogier van der Weyden. C. 1400—1464. The Netherlands

St Luke Drawing a Portrait of the Virgin

109

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. 1606—1669. Holland

Flora. 1634

110

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. 1606—1669. Holland

Danaë. 1645

111

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. 1606—1669. Holland

The Holy Family. 1645

112

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn. 1606—1669. Holland

The Return of the Prodigal Son. С. 1668—69

113

Frans Hals. C. 1580-1666. Holland

Portrait of a Man. 1660

114

Gerard Terborch. 1617—1681. Holland

A Glass of Lemonade

115

Jacob Jordaens. 1593—1678. Flanders

The Bean King. С. 1638

116

Frans Snyders. 1579—1657. Flanders

Fish Shop

117

Frans Snyders. 1579—1657. Flanders

Bowl of Fruits on a Red Tablecloth

118

Jacob van Ruisdael. 1628/29—1682. Holland

The Bog

119

Pieter de Hooch. 1626—after 1684. Holland

Mistress and Maid. C. 1660

120

Jan Steen. 1626—1679. Holland

The Loafers. C. 1660

121

Peter Paul Rubens. 1577—1640. Flanders

Bacchus. Between 1635 and 1640

122

Peter Paul Rubens. 1577—1640. Flanders

Perseus and Andromeda. 1620—21

123

Anthony van Dyck. 1599—1641. Flanders

Family Group. Between 1618 and 1621

124

Anthony van Dyck. 1599—1641. Flanders

Self-Portrait. Late 1620s—early 1630s

125

Luis de Morales. 1520/25—1586.

Spain Madonna and Child with a Cross-shaped Distaff

126

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos). 1541—1614.

Spain St Peter and St Paul. Between 1587 and 1592

127

Antonio Pereda. 1608—1678.

Spain Still Life. 1652

128

Glass vase with handles

Spain. 17th century

129

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. 1617—1682, Spain

The Immaculate Conception. 1660s

130

Diego Velazquez. 1599—1660. Spain

Luncheon. C. 1617—18

131

Francisco Goya. 1746—1828. Spain

Portrait of the Actress Antonia Zárate. C. 1811

132

Thomas Gainsborough. 1727—1788. England

Lady in Blue. 1770s

133

George Morland. 1763—1804. England

Approaching Storm. 1791

134

Richard Parkes Bonington. 1801—1828. England

Boats by the Seashore. Not earlier than 1824

135

Lucas Cranach the Elder. 1472—1553. Germany

Virgin and Child under the Apple-tree

136

Ambrosius Holbein. C. 1495 — с. 1520. Germany

Portrait of a Young Man

137

Albrecht Dürer. 1471—1528. Germany

Allegory of Justice

138

François Clouet. C. 1522—1572. France

Portrait of Charles IX. 1566

139

Gold pendant “Swan”

Germany. 15th century

140

Chest with figures

France, Limoges. 1215—20

141

Louis Le Nain. 1593—1648. France

The Milkwoman’s Family. 1640s

142

Nicolas Poussin. 1594—1665. France

Tancred and Erminia. 1630s

143

Antoine Watteau. 1684—1721. France

The Capricious Girl (La Boudeuse). С. 1718

144

Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin. 1699—1779. France

The Washerwoman

145

Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin. 1699—1779. France

Still Life with the Attributes of the Arts. 1766

146

François Boucher. 1703—1770. France

Pastoral Scene

147

Jean Goujon. С. 1510—1568. France

Venus and Cupid. Marble

148

Étienne-Maurice Falconet. 1716—1791. France

Flora. Marble. 1750

149

Jean-Antoine Houdon. 1741—1828. France

Voltaire. Marble. 1781

150

Eugène Delacroix. 1798—1863. France

Arab Saddling His Horse. 1855

151

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. 1780—1867. France

Portrait of Count Guryev. 1821

152

Claude Monet. 1840—1926. France

Lady in the Garden at Sainte-Adresse. 1867

153

Edouard Manet. 1832—1883. France

Portrait of Mme Jules Guillemet. 1880

154

Auguste Renoir. 1841—1919. France

Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary. 1878

155

Auguste Renoir. 1841—1919. France

Girl with a Fan. 1881

156

Edgar Degas. 1834—1917. France

Woman Combing Her Hair. 1885—86. Pastel

157

Auguste Rodin. 1840—1917. France

Eternal Spring. Marble. After 1884

158

Vincent van Gogh. 1853—1890. France

Ladies of Arles. 1888

159

Vincent van Gogh. 1853—1890. France

Cottages. 1890

160

Paul Gauguin. 1848—1903. France

Woman Holding a Fruit of Mango. 1893

161

Paul Cézanne. 1839—1906. France

The Smoker. C. 1895

162

Henri Matisse. 1869—1954. France

The Dance. 1910

163

Henri Matisse. 1869—1954. France

Portrait of the Artist’s Wife. 1913

164

Henri Matisse. 1869—1954. France

Venus in a Shell. Bronze. 1930

165

Pablo Picasso. 1881—1973. France

Three Women. 1908

166

Pablo Picasso. 1881—1973. France

Absinthe Drinker. 1901

167

Hans Grundig. 1901—1958. Germany

Summer Lightnings above the City. 1933

168

Renato Guttuso. Born 1912. Italy

Rocco and Son. 1960

169

André Fougeron. Born 1913. France

The Bridge. 1964