STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM
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Address: Inzhenernaya St., 4 |
The State Russian Museum contains the world's largest
collection of Russian fine art. It was opened on March 7 (March 19,
New Style), 1898. The collections of the Russian Museum number over
400,000 exhibits. All genres and schools of fine, applied and folk art
from the 10th to the 20th century are presented in the museum. The original
interiors of the Mikhailovsky Palace harmonically supplement the exposition
of the Russian Museum.
The exposition of the Museum opens with the Ancient
Russian painting department, where the visitors can see the icons by
Andrei Rublev, Dionisiy, Simon Ushakov, as well as by unknown masters
of Novgorodian and other schools of Russian icon painting. The department
of the art of the 18th century presents marvelous portraits by A. Antropov,
F. Rokotov, D. Levitsky, V. Borovikovsky. The department also features
sculptural works by B. Rastrelli, F. Shubin, M. Kozlovsky, monumental
canvases by A. Losenko. The museum contains an interesting collection
of works of the first half of the 19th century. Among them there is
"The Last Day of Pompeii" by K. Brullov, "The Brazen Serpent" by F.
Bruni, "The Tidal Wave" by I. Aivazovsky.
Wandering
around the Russian Museum halls, one can get acquainted with the history
of realism in Russian art of the second half of the 19th century as
well. The visitors can see genre canvases by A. Venetsianov and A. Fedotov,
landscapes by A. Savrasov and I. Levitan, historical paintings by I.
Surikov, works by V. Perov, I. Kramskoi, I. Repin and many others. The
artists of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th
century are widely presented in the exposition. Among them are V. Serov,
M. Nesterov, N. Rerikh, M. Vrubel, B. Kustodiev.
The exposition dedicated to the painting of the first
half of the 20th century presents the canvases of the artists of the
so-called "Soviet school". Paintings, sculptures and plates present
life of Russia in the 20th century. One can get acquainted with the
works by V. Oreshnikov, E. Moiseenko, V. Muhina, M. Anikushin, V. Favorsky,
E. Kibrik and others.
The department of the modern art is the youngest in
the Russian Museum. It was founded at the end of the 1980s in order
to demonstrate new and far-out kinds of art, such as installation, video
art, modern photographic art and so forth. This collection has been
constantly growing.
The collections of the Russian Museum also feature
sculpture, numismatics, ancient applied art, prints. Annually the museum
houses about 30 temporary exhibitions.
The Russian Museum occupies four magnificent buildings
located in the center of Saint Petersburg. They are the Stroganov palace,
the Marble palace, the Mikhailovsky (Engineer) Castle and the main building,
the Mikhailovsky Palace with the Benois wing. The Mikhailovsky palace
bears the name of its owner, Great Prince Mikhail Pavlovitch, the junior
brother of Emperor Alexander I.
