Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist, whose pioneering work and writing had a profound influence on the development of non-objective art in the 20th century. Born in Kyiv to an ethnic Polish family, his concept of Suprematism sought to develop a form of expression that moved as far as possible from the world of natural forms (objectivity) and subject matter in order to access "the supremacy of pure feeling" and spirituality. Malevich is considered to be part of the Ukrainian avant-garde that was shaped by Ukrainian-born artists who worked first in Ukraine and later over a geographical span between Europe and America.
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is the largest museum of European art in Moscow, located in Volkhonka street, just opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The International musical festival Sviatoslav Richter's December nights has been held in the Pushkin Museum since 1981.
The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest art museum in the world by gallery space. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive 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. It attracted 968,604 visitors in 2020, a drop of eighty percent from 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, it ranked eleventh on the list of most visited art museums in the world.
The Farnese Hercules is an ancient statue of Hercules, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by Glykon, who is otherwise unknown; the name is Greek but he may have worked in Rome. Like many other Ancient Roman sculptures it is a copy or version of a much older Greek original that was well known, in this case a bronze by Lysippos that would have been made in the fourth century BC. This original survived for over 1500 years until it was melted down by Crusaders in 1205 during the Sack of Constantinople. The enlarged copy was made for the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, where the statue was recovered in 1546, and is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. The heroically-scaled Hercules is one of the most famous sculptures of antiquity, and has fixed the image of the mythic hero in the European imagination.
The Benois Madonna, otherwise known as the Madonna and Child with Flowers, is a Rennaissance painting by Leonardo da Vinci, now in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. One of two Madonnas that Leonardo started in October 1478, it was completed c. 1478–1480; the other was the Madonna of the Carnation, now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
The Madonna Litta is a late 15th-century painting, traditionally attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. It depicts the Virgin Mary breastfeeding the Christ child, a devotional subject known as the Madonna lactans. The figures are set in a dark interior with two arched openings, as in Leonardo's earlier Madonna of the Carnation, and a mountainous landscape in aerial perspective can be seen beyond. In his left hand Christ holds a goldfinch, which is symbolic of his future Passion.
Stefano Maderno was an Italian sculptor.
Venus with a Mirror is a painting by Titian, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and it is considered to be one of the collection's highlights.
Perseus and Andromeda is a 1622 painting in the Hermitage Museum by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens of the ancient Greek myth of Perseus and Andromeda after the former's defeat of the Gorgon. The composition is similar to that of an earlier painting by Rubens, Perseus frees Andromeda.
Portrait of an Actor is a painting by Domenico Fetti in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was probably painted in 1621 or 1622 in Mantua, Italy. The sitter, who is holding a theatre mask, is believed to be a commedia dell'arte actor, either Tristano Martinelli or Francesco Andreini. There is a well known copy of the portrait by an unidentified artist in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice.
The Stolen Kiss is an oil on canvas painting from the end of the 1780s, located in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. It has been historically attributed to the French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806). At 45 by 55 centimetres, the painting is a genre scene influenced by Dutch Golden Age painting, depicting a young couple in a secretive romance, set in the foreground — a subject that was favoured before the French Revolution among French aristocrats.
The Union of Earth and Water is a Baroque painting by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, showing Cybele as the personification of earth holding the horn of plenty and Neptune as the personification of water in the center. The pair is crowned by the goddess Victoria and the union is heralded through a conch by the Triton below. The union symbolizes fertility, wealth and prosperity, specifically the city of Antwerp and the river Scheldt whose mouth in Rubens' times was blocked by the Dutch depriving Flanders of the access to the sea. The painting features a pyramidal composition, symmetry and the balance of forms. It was influenced by late Italian Renaissance, particularly by Venetian artists.
The Portrait of Doña Antonia Zárate is an 1810–1811 painting of the actress Antonia Zárate by Francisco Goya or his studio. It is now in the Hermitage Museum, and if it is an autograph work, it is the only painting by Goya in a Russian collection.
The Laundress or A Young Girl Doing Laundry is the title of three works by the French artist Jean Siméon Chardin. The subject of laundresses, also known as washerwomen, was a popular one in art, especially in France.
Actors of the Comédie-Française, also traditionally known as The Coquettes, is an oil on panel painting in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Variously dated within the 1710s by scholars, the painting forms a compact half-length composition that combines portraiture and genre painting, notably influenced by Venetian school, the Le Nain brothers, and Watteau's master Claude Gillot; one of the rarest cases in Watteau's body of work, it shows five figures — two women, two men, and a black boy — amid a darkened background, in contrary to landscapes that are usually found in Watteau's fêtes galantes.
David and Jonathan is a painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt, made in 1642, now in the collection of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Painted on oak, it is one of the works, together with the Hellenistic sculpture acquired in 1850, The Venus de Taurida, with which the Hermitage began their collection in 1882.
La Boudeuse is the modern title given to an oil on canvas painting in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, by the French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Completed in the late 1710s, La Boudeuse depicts a young couple set amidst a park in the foreground, in a rare example of the two-figure landscape composition which is considered one of the best fêtes galantes in Watteau's later work. However, the picture's authenticity was also a subject of scholarly debate, for it had been engraved by English painter Philippe Mercier, once a follower of Watteau, and was not included in Jean de Jullienne's edition of Watteau's work published in the 1730s.
Flora is a painting by Francesco Melzi, completed circa 1520. It depicts the Roman mythological figure Flora, the goddess of springtime and flowers, a popular subject among Renaissance artists. The painting was in the collection of Maria de’ Medici in 1649 and has been in the collection of Hermitage Museum since 1850.
The Penitent Magdalene is a marble sculpture of Mary Magdalene by Antonio Canova, about 90 cm high, known in two final versions, now in Genoa and St Petersburg.
Self-Portrait on an Easel is a 1603-1604 oil on panel painting by Annibale Carracci, now displayed in Room 231 of the New Hermitage Building of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The portrait from the work was repeated for an autograph self-portrait now in the Uffizi, whilst a 1595 version of the Hermitage work is also in the Uffizi.
