Storming the Winter Palace

I'm doing yesterday and today in one post because I got a 2 day advance ticket to the Hermitage, a kind of Russia equivalent of the Louvre in Paris, based in the Winter Palace and two adjoing buildings.

I began with the Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman collections, which were pretty impressive. I then ran into a problem, which is that to me, with a few exceptions, Europe produced little of artistic value after the fall of the Roman Empire until the 19th Century. Romanticism was alright, but it's only with the Impressionists onwards that there's anything I can get particularly excited about. For people who like religious paintings of constipated looking saints, and the other things they liked painting back then, the Hermitage is paradise.

Eventually though, I found my way to the top floor where there is a collection of French art covering Romanticism to post-Impressionism (Picasso and so on), including some very pretty Monets and Renoirs. Sadly the area with most of the Van Gogh's was closed off, but there were still a few good ones. Then later I managed to locate a special exhibition with even more Impressionist paintings, which consisted of works seized from Germany during the Second World War, and this is the first time many of them have been publicly displayed. So that was most excellent.

Other highlights from the first day included an exhibition of oriental art, mostly from India, China and Japan, a taster for what's in store for me next month I suppose. Also, the rooms that the last Tsar and his family lived in are on display. He certainly didn't shop at Ikea. Or believe in minimalism. In a different collection of old royal treasures is a clock made of polished brass (I think), which looks like a sculpture of a woodland scene with a peackock, cockerel, and toadstool that tells the time. Apparently when it chimes, the birds come alive and the cockerel screeches, though they've stopped demonstrating to prevent wear.

On the second day I decided to see some works by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (ho ho ho), even though I'm not keen on the style. My opinion wasn't changed by either Leonardo or Raphael, although the only Michelangelo piece was a statue of a crouching boy, which was pretty good. While looking for them I saw plenty of pre-Impressionist works, and apart from a few decent landscapes and seascapes, despite my best efforts to appreciate them, they still pretty much all struck me as dull, lifeless and frequently just plain ugly.

There were some good tapestries, although I couldn't find the one of Australia mentioned in the guide, maybe it was in one of the closed off rooms. I'll have to alter my claim from yesterday a little too: it was only after they discovered perspective that art got boring in Europe. The few medieval paintings and ivory carvings were really good, even the religious ones. Also, just before and at the same time as the Impressionists, there was a movement in Germany of which there was a special exhibition (also made up of works seized during WWII). This was nearly all black and white drawings and sketches, but with amazing detail.

I rounded the visit off with another viewing of the two Impressionist exhibitions, the oriental art one, and a display of European arms and armour, including for knights mounted on stuffed horses. Then I had tea and cake, before wandering around Sennaya, the area where Dostoyevsky lived while writing Crime and Punishment, and whre most of the book is set. Also nearby is Yusepov Palace, which I went to see. This is where Rasputin (a mystic who preached salvation through sex and debauchery who was popular with early 20th century female aristocrats) was poisoned, stabbed, and shot several times before being thrown into the canal where he finally drowned.

Finally, reading my guide, I found out why some of the stations have those industrial doors, and also why they're so far underground it seems to take 5 minutes on the escalators to reach the platform: they were built to double as shelters in the event of nuclear war.