Dutch and Flemish art in Russia

in cooperation with
Stichting Cultuur Inventarisatie

17-24 March 1999 17 March, Wednesday

9:00 Check in at Schiphol Airport for
10:50 KLM flight KL1395 to St. Petersburg (flying time 2 hours and 55 minutes)
15:45 Arrival in St. Petersburg (2 hour time difference)
Bus tour of central city
Borrel and dinner in town
Transfer to Hotel Pulkovskaya
Pl. Pobedy 1, St. Petersburg, tel: 007 812 123 5122 / fax: 007 812 123 5845
The Pulkovskaya is a 4-star hotel (equivalent to the upper end of the 3-star class in Europe). Rooms with bath, television, good beds. It is located outside the city center, but is across the street from a metro station on a line that brings you to the center in 10 minutes.

18 March, Thursday

The entire day will be spent in the Hermitage, which was begun in 1711 and incorporates the Winter Palaces of the Tsars. It was founded as a museum in 1764, “when Catherine II purchased 225 works of art of the Dutch and Flemish schools from Berlin” (The Dictionary of Art). In the morning we will have the choice of visiting the museum on our own or being guided by a museum guide. After lunch, at 2 o’clock, we will be greeted by the assistant director of the Hermitage, Dr. George Vilinbakhov.
The afternoon program is offered to us by our colleagues of the Hermitage. Irina Sokolova, head of the department of Dutch paintings, will bring us to the restoration department, for a talk on the restoration of Rembrandt’s Danaë following the tragic acid attack and the recent regeneration and cleaning of the master’s Return of the Prodigal Son.
The Flemish paintings galleries will be shown to us by Natalia Grizay, head of the department of Flemish paintings. Her catalogue of these holdings is scheduled for publication in 2002.
Alexej Larionov, curator of Dutch and Flemish drawings, is putting together a presentation exclusively for us of early drawings from the Netherlandish School. It will be mounted in the Hall of Twelve Columns, which will be closed to the public today. Larionov is in the process of preparing a small publication, in English, concerning the history of Hermitage collection of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters drawings.
Roman Grigoriev of the printroom will show us works by three generations of printmakers: Romein de Hooghe, Adriaen van Schoonebeek, who made his career in Russia, and Pieter Pickaert. Their prints were the subject of Grigoriev’s talk in Amsterdam, some of them unpublished and studied by him for the first time.
Lunch on the Nevsky Prospekt
Dinner in the hotel

19 March, Friday

Museum of the History of St. Petersburg (Peter and Paul Fortress)
Built between 1703 and 1725, houses the museum since 1924. At noon a cannon will be fired, as every day for the past 294 years, to commemorate the defeat of the Swedes on 14 May 1704.
Lunch in the city center
Russian Museum
“Established in 1895 as the Russian Museum of Alexander III and opened to the public in 1898. Along with the Tret’yakov Gallery in Moscow, it has one of the richest collections of old Russian art, Russian works from the 18th to 20th centuries and the work of Soviet artists. It is housed in the former Mikhailovsky Palace,” one of the great palaces of St. Petersburg, built for Mikhail Pavlovich, the brother of Alexander I. (DoA). We will be visiting not only the main galleries but also the storage vaults. The day of our visit is the 101th anniversary of the museum.
Dinner
Opera: Mariinskiy Theater (formerly Kirov): Rossini, Figaro (tickets reserved for those who wish to attend)

20 March, Saturday

Pavlovsk, the palace of Tsar Paul I
Built in 1782-86 on an estate presented by Catherine the Great to her son Paul and his wife Maria Feodorovna in 1777. They were the parents of Anna Pavlovna, the wife of King Willem II of the Netherlands. The world-famous interior is largely the work of Catherine’s favorite architect, the Scot Charles Cameron. We will be received in Pavlovsk by the director, Nicolas Tretiakov.
Lunch in Pavlovsk
Pushkin (Tsarskoye Selo), Palace of Catherine I
Originally built in 1717-23, remodelled completely by Empress Elizabeth I between 1741 and 1762. “Foreign visitors described it as a ‘gigantic jewel’. Tsarskoye Selo is unique in Russian culture; it contains all the stylistic trends of 18th-and 19th-century architecture, the grandeur of its buildings and achievements in landscape gardening [including a Dutch garden] inspired many writers.” (DoA). The installment of the paintings in the Picture Gallery is a splendid example of 18th-century palace art display.
Both Pavlovsk and Pushkin were virtually demolished in the Second World War. Their restoration has been a model project. Notably the Amber Room in Pushkin will be visited with this in mind.
Dinner in the hotel
Concert in the Hermitage Theater by the Philharmonia Youth Orchestra of music by the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, who will be present, and a contemporary Russian composer.
Cocktail reception following the concert. The concert and reception are offered to us by the consulate-general of the Netherlands in St. Petersburg.

21 March, Sunday

Kunstkamera (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography)
Founded in 1714 with the assistance of Peter the Great, in its present building since 1719, the Kunstkamera is the oldest museum in St. Petersburg. In 1724 it was placed under the care of the Academy of Sciences. The museum houses the collection of the Amsterdam apothecary Albertus Seba, acquired by Peter the Great. The current exhibition features one of the central core collections, acquired from a Russian in 1717. We will be guided by the curator, Anna Radziun.
Lunch in the city center
Hermitage or free time
Dinner
23:33 Departure for Moscow by night train (4-person couchettes; the trip lasts 8 hours)

22 March, Monday

Transfer to Hotel Ukraina
Kutuzovsky prospekt, 2/1, tel: 007 095 243 3264 / fax: 007 095 243 2896. 4-star hotel with good accommodations. The Ukraina, in the center of town, is a monument of High Soviet architecture.
Brunch
Pushkin Museum
Named after the poet, but not until 1937. Built in 1898-1912 on the initiative of Prof. Ivan Tsvetayev, head of department of art history at Moscow University. Originally it housed plaster copies only; in the 1920s it was supplemented by a more universal collection, largely transferred from the Hermitage. The sources from private collections were discussed at CODART TWEE by Marina Senenko.
Our visit will take place on a Monday, when the museum is closed to the public. We will be received by the director, Dr. Irina Antonova, and our colleagues on staff, Vadim Sadkov, Marina Senenko and Xenia Egorova, who will show us the Dutch and Flemish collections. They will undoubtedly concentrate on works for which they have new information or attributions resulting from their recent catalogues of Dutch and Flemish paintings and drawings. Works which any members of our party particularly wish to see will be brought out of stroage.
17:30-19:00 Reception at the home of the Netherlands embassy counsel, Jan Hesseling
Dinner in the hotel

23 March, Tuesday

Tret’yakov Museum
Pavel Tret’yakov was one of the first merchants to patronize the arts in Russia. Initially he bought western European engravings and 17th-century Dutch paintings, but then switched to Russian art. In 874 opened as a museum, in 1892 the collection was donated to the city of Moscow. The gallery was opened in 1893. Pavel remained curator until his death in 1898. Since nationalization in 1918 it is the State Tret’yakov Museum. Together with the Russian Museum the most important collection of Russian art in the world. (From DoA).
Lunch
Red Square
The Kremlin
The armory, “which housed the first government workshops for icon painting from the 164os” (DoA) and now houses the Kremlin treasury, and the three cathedrals.
The Cathedral of the Dormition was used for the most important religious and state ceremonies since the 14th century. In its present state it goes back to 1475-79, when it was rebuilt on the ancient model by an Italian architect. The Cathedral of St. Michael (1505-08; interior 1564-65) is the burial place of the tsars. The Cathedral of the Annunciation (1484-89), the house church of the tsars, is a typical example of Muscovite architecture.
Dinner
Evening program: The taming of the shrew (music by Scarlatti) at the Bolshoi Theater (tickets reserved for those who wish to attend).

24 March, Wednesday

Kuskovo, State Museum of Ceramics and Kuskovo Estate
“From the early 17th century until 1917 owned by the Sheremet’yev family. By the mid-1750s a large formal park had been created… In 1769-75 a woorden Neo-classical palace was built by serf architects… The ceremonial rooms are decorated with painted panels, fine gilded stucco, crystal chandeliers and marble sculptures… The pavilions in the park include the ‘Dutch House'(1749-51), the stepped pediments of which are reminiscent of Dutch architecture.” (DoA)
Lunch
Transfer to airport
15:25 KLM flight KL 1525 to Amsterdam (flying time 3 hours and 40 minutes)
17:05 Arrival at Schiphol

The chief guide is Natalia Konstantinova. The organization is in the hands of
Voyage & Culture
Prinsengracht 783-785
NL-1017 JZ Amsterdam
T +31 20 623 8368
F +31 20 626 2820