The Hermitage guide

The Hellenistic period is illustrated by intaglios and cameos among which pride of place is held by the world-famous Gonzaga Cameo depicting Ptolemy Philadelphus and his wife Arsinoë. Another Hellenistic masterpiece is the Zeus Cameo, remarkable for its plasticity and the ingenious use of natural polychromy in sardonyx. The cameos depicting groups of figures are of special interest, since some of them reproduce compositions from monumental Hellenistic painting that have not survived to our time.

The Hermitage collection of Etruscan (sixth to fourth centuries B.C.) and Italic (third and second centuries B.C.) gems, and Roman works of the first century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. is also very rich. Some of them reproduce compositions from classical and Hellenistic painting or sculpture, such as the two intaglios by Hyllos, an outstanding engraver of the Augustan Age, who interprets the Zeus of Phidias and the Apollo of Skopas in the spirit of Augustan Classicism.

The Hermitage has an extremely varied collection of terracottas, and some groups from sites at Olbia, Chersonesus and various other towns, and from the necropoli of the Bosporan Kingdom are unique. The terra-cotta statuettes of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. from the sanctuary of the goddess Demeter at Nymphaeum and the Bolshaya Bliznitsa Barrow provide a wealth of information for scholars. The Attic and Corinthian terra-cottas and those from Asia Minor are very valuable. Even more important are the works from Tanagra that help make up for the lack of Hellenistic monumental sculpture, which is rather poorly represented in the Hermitage.

Only two museums in the world possess large collections of Greek and Roman wooden sarcophagi and other objects in wood: the Graeco-Roman Museum in Alexandria and the Hermitage in Leningrad. The stone-lined burial vaults of the Bosporan Kingdom and the tombs of Abusir have preserved these examples of ancient craftsmanship, made in a highly perishable material. Other museums have only odd specimens of such works, usually from these very same necropoli.

The sarcophagi were decorated with carving, turned details, sculptural insets (as, for example, on the sarcophagus from the Zmeïny, or Snake Barrow), and were brightly painted and sometimes gilded. Study of these works can add to our knowledge of ancient Graeco-Roman sculpture and even architecture, since in their form and decoration they often reproduce architectural features of fine buildings and temples. The funerary objects inside the sarcophagi help date the whole burial. Clearly then such finds are immensely valuable.

Burials have provided us not only with ancient objects in wood but also with fabrics. The Hermitage has about forty specimens of textiles from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., representing the world’s largest collection of fragments of Greek clothing, palls, and cloths used for lining sarcophagi. They enable us to see the various methods of weaving, and to form an idea of the range of colours and techniques employed in decorative embroidery at the time. Thus, a fragment of a woollen fabric from the Semibratny Barrows, decorated with ducks and stags’ heads, still preserves its bright colours quite well. The Hermitage collection, consisting chiefly of woollen fabrics, includes local and imported productions. Some of the specimens bear patterns reminiscent of those which adorn the dresses of characters painted on red-figure vases, or those depicted in ancient literary sources.

No description of the Greek and Roman antiquities housed in the Hermitage would be complete without mention of its glassware. This rich and varied collection enables us to trace the development of ancient glass-making through fine, high-quality examples in an excellent state of preservation. The majority of items come from the northern Black Sea coast, from Panticapaeum, Olbia, and Chersonesus, and are of Eastern Mediterranean or Italic provenance.

The early period is represented by opaque polychrome vessels executed in the sand-core technique — Phoenician aryballoi, alabastra, and oinochoæ from the sixth to fourth centuries B.C. The vessels from the third and second centuries B.C., fashioned in moulds, and then cut and polished, deserve special mention. No less interesting are the examples from the first century B.C. and first century A.D., imitating coloured stones. The main body of the collection consists of free-blown glass vessels of the Roman period. Displaying a remarkable diversity of shapes and a wide range of colours, decorated with ornamental patterns and figures in relief, they are evidence of the flowering of glass-making in the first centuries A.D. One of the outstanding items of Syrian provenance is a superb mould-blown amphora signed by Ennion of Sidon.