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Published: August 20th 2016
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Our second day in the State Hermitage.
One of our favourite outings, back home in the North East of England, is a trip to Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, Co Durham. There is a stunning automaton silver swan on the ground floor........It still swims daily on a sea of silver. James Cox collaborated with John Joseph Merlin in 1773 to create the machine. Here in the Hermitage, Catherine ll's golden peacock was commissioned in 1777 and shares the same maker! James Cox worked this time with German Friedrich Juryman to convert a smaller automaton made for the Dublin Lottery(!) into the very popular display now still on show on the first floor. A video shows the peacock working, putting on a tail feather display for a somewhat under impressed owl, who taps his foot.
From a list of Old Masters we saw: Rembrandt, Rubens, Da Vinci, Titian, Tintoretto and Rafael, it was Rembrandt who rang my bells, shook my cockles and brought occasional spinal tingling. Sometimes his brush strokes are quite rough e.g. 'Portrait of a Jew' and in other pictures the image is photographic, seamless, without texture. Whichever way, the personality of the subject, man or
woman, is apparent and supported by the technique. All the pictures seem to be achieved under the flame of a single candle which produces subtly and tone and a celebration of light, generations before the Impressionists.
One picture by Gerrit van Honthorst exemplifies Rembrandt's approach: 'Childhood of Christ' shows a carpenter and son working by candle light in a workshop. But why didn't the craftsman work in daylight? Perhaps it is a Netherlandish slant on things, Northern Europeans getting less daylight in the winter months...... or an artist's licence, because he enjoys painting the effects of a single light source?
The most visceral of the Old Masters' works in the Hermitage was a whole room full of huge Frans Snyder paintings ....... these are all of still life, mostly recently killed....... Vast tables piled high with dead meat, fish and the occasional vegetable...... the trophies of hunters and fishermen.
But in an extraordinary 'revenge' piece of seventeenth century comic strip art by Paulus Potter, 'Punishment of a Hunter', a sequence of scenes picture a chasseur and his team bagging deer, lions, boars and so on, watched by Rubenesque near nude ladies. But in
the centre, two scenes show the hunted turning upon the hunter, and then turning him on a spit above a fire!
The Puzzle of the Parquet: today I discovered that most of the stunning hardwood floors were made in the St Petersburg factory of G Müller in the mid nineteenth century. In renovation, if they're sanded and treated with something modern, they look like they've been bought yesterday from a very classy B&Q.
I need to make a plea for the preservation of the independence of sole travellers. Most of the Hermitage experience has been a joy, especially considering the thousands, like myself, who wish to be here. But, at certain pinch points, where a big name is displayed ..... large numbers of guided tourists are led by raised flags /brollies and descend, en masse, with most individuals sporting selfy-sticks intent upon auto portraiture. It is the competitiveness, without regard for anyone else within or without their party, that irks as they bag evidence of the visit. 21st century hunters.
Da Vinci pulled the most ugly behaviour of the tour crowds today.... It's not his fault......
Always on the look
out for St George, we were glad to have a pair of sightings today. One was on a Tintoretto, in reds and blues, the second on a Majolica plate. I gather George features on Moscow's coat of arms, so I'm hopeful for more sightings there.
Eventually we threw in the towel, lunched in the excellent GHQ Café then picked up the trail in that building........ My top find was Manet'a recumbent nude picture 'Olympia' on loan from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Manet captures a white nineteen year old, (Victorine Meurent), in a very casual version of a pose already established by Titian and others in past. Her depiction with a stare direct to the observer was considered shocking by most, but declared to be the start of a new Modernist movement by others. Victorine posed for 'Dejeuner sur l'Hêrbe' and numerous other Manet pictures.
On the way home we stopped at St Isaac's Cathedral ..... like a squat St Pauls, Neo Classical with a large dome ........with recent restoration still under way. Not my favourite of the churches here but worth seeing. Sober beige marbles border mosaics and oil paintings, lots of gold....
rococo..... green malachite columns frame the small iconostasis.
Outside, drivers of three flat back pick ups waited for the word from a policemen to lift and abduct cars double parked by the Catheral. All three operations were completed in a couple of minutes in a highly choreographed display of pushing and tilting. I wonder how much it costs to get your car released from the compound?
Best meal thus trip at Suliko Restaurant, directly opposite our hotel. Vodka, Georgian wine, wonderful bread-based cheese and egg pie, chowder, salmon and minute steak.... come here all you travellers, the male waiter was the best, friendly, attentive but unassuming worker we've come across here, and he was supported well by the barman, chefs and other staff.
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