Dutch and Flemish Old Master Drawings in the Hermitage
18 March, 1999 - ongoing

The exhibition opened in the Hall of Twelve Columns of the New Hermitage on 18 March 1999. It was timed to the international congress Dutch and Flemish Art in Russia. The congress was organized by the international foundation dealing with study and inventory of Flemish and Dutch art (CODART). On view are 70 works, the most valuable of 3,000 drawings held in the Hermitage collection occupying an important place amongst the world notable collections of Flemish drawings.

On display are several drawings of the 15th to the first half of 16th century and colourful decorative sheets of the 17th century. Three great eras of Netherlandish drawing are represented in roughly equal proportion; these are Mannerism (the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries), Flemish Baroque (first half of the 17th century) and Dutch drawings of the mid-17th century, a peak period of the national school development. The majority of the works are well known; these are drawings by Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens and Jan van Dyck, Jacob van Ruisdael and Jan van Goyen, Hendrick Goltzius and Abraham Bloemaert. Side by side with these works are drawings which have not been either published nor on show; these are St Josef from the circle of Rogier van der Weyden, The Sculptor's Studio by a Flemish artist of the mid-15th century, Landscape with Pan and Syrinx by Hans Collaert, View of a Small Town by Paulus van Vianen, Allegory of Painting by Bartolomeus Spranger, Wooded Landscape with Shepherds by Gilles de Hondecoeter, The Judgment of Paris by Joachim Wtewael, Adam and Eve by Jan Wierix, and Acis and Galatea by Gerrit Pietrsz (?).