In 1764 Empress Catherine the Great purchased works of Flemish and Dutch old masters from Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky, who initially had assembled them for King Frederick II of Prussia. Luckily for St.Petersburg's art lovers, Frederick was nearly broke after the Seven Years War and couldn’t pay for Gotzkowsky's efforts. The ready-witted agent then offered 225 masterpieces to the Russian crown. The next big replenishment arrived to the Hermitage in 1772. It was the collection of the French art connoisseur Louis Antoine Crozat. And that's how the precious Danae came along.
One of the Rembrandt's most magnificent works, it was painted in 1636 and depicts an episode from Greek mythology in which the mother of Perseus Danae welcomes Zeus. An eight-by-ten-foot sized masterpiece was attacked by a mentally-ill man on June 15, 1985. The vandal splashed sulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with a knife. The central part of the composition was badly damaged, especially Danae's face, arms and legs. The staff of Hermitage's Laboratory of Expert Restoration of Easel Paintings spent a decade recovering the artwork inch by inch. In 1997 Danae was back on display placed under the armored glass for protection.
The masterpieces continued to arrive to the Hermitage throughout the 19th century. In 1850 the museum acquired the collection from the Palace of Venetian patrician Cristoforo Barbarigo. The Barbarigo collection had been put together in the 16th century and contained five works by Titian, including his world-famous masterpieces The Penitent Mary Magdalene and St Sebastian. Another chef-d’oeuvre that is a must-see in Hermitage is Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna and Child also known as Benois Madonna.
The painting belonged to the family of the notable Saint-Petersburg architect Leonty Benois, whose wife had inherited it from her father – the merchant Alexander Sapozhnikov. In 1912 Maria Benois decided to sell the painting and sent it abroad. The London antiquarian Duveen offered 500,000 francs for it but the Russian public launched a fundraising campaign to purchase the masterpiece for the Hermitage. Maria Benois eventually consented to sell the painting to the Russian government for the sum of just 150,000 rubles as a goodwill gesture and in 1914 the Benois Madonna was added to the Hermitage collection.
But if you think that the golden days of grand purchases and generous donations have passed, you are mistaken. In 2002 the museum presented its visitors with one the famous Black Squares by Kazimir Malevich (in general there are three modifications of the painting). The work was worth of astonishing 1 million dollars at that time but we assure you that it’s only one of the jewels in the Hermitage’s chest of treasures.
