RU-6612333 The Leonardo da Vinci Room in the Old Hermitage

The Old Hermitage is one of several buildings within the State Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg, Russia. The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture and is the second-largest art museum in the world. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of paintings. Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from the Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the "Hermitage Theatre", and the "Winter Palace", the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to the General Staff Building on the Palace Square facing the Winter Palace, and the Menshikov Palace.

This Leornado da Vinci room is in the Old Hermitage. It has with two tiers of windows and it contains two of the museum's masterpieces - two works by one of the greatest Renaissance masters - Leonardo da Vinci. The Benois Madonna, one of the artist's undisputed creations, and The Litta Madonna. When decorating the room in 1858, the architect Andrei Stakenschneider combined light-coloured stucco with colourful stone (porphyry and jasper columns, lapis-lazuli insets in the marble fireplaces) and gilding. The room is further adorned by painted panels and ceiling paintings. The doors are decorated in the Boulle technique with tortoiseshell veneer and gilded brass.

This beautiful postcard was sent by Svetlana (Deember 2018).