Mutter, ich bin dumm

I am a self taught beginner artist

I’m really into drawing and sculpturing things

i really like classical and atonal music, i have also been getting into philosophy lately

i have also had a hyperfixation on murder drones and space odyssey for like a year already lmao

a bit autistic

russian

not a native speaker so please dont mock the way i speak

my favourite composers are shostakovich and beethoven btw

also open to commissions

Russian Emperor Alexander the Third was assassinated on the street where church has been later constructed to commemorate him. It has this distinguishable Modern-style design, with a lot of mosaics completed by a group of 32 different artists, among which were Vasnetsov, Nesterov and Belyaev. The overall square of all the mosaics inside and outside is 7065 square meters, the biggest in Europe. All the walls inside of the building are covered in mosaics, except for the six walls of the 2 entrances and exits, covered only partially. Soviets wanted to destroy this church as well as many other countless churches, but the 1941 war interrupted the demolition, and after the war it wasn’t continued, and so the church still stands today.

The exact place where Alexander the Third was fatally wounded by a bomb explosion, now inside of the church

The overall architecture and mosaics

Close ups of some of my personally favourite mosaics

There are also some on the outside but most of them were eventually placed inside by architects for them to last longer without restoration. Almost like they knew that Bolsheviks will come to power and stop all funding ;((

If for Van Gogh And Gauguin the effect of colours was very important, for Matisse, then, it was pretty much the main way of expression. I again don’t have a lot to say about him too, just take a look

Another adored artist of mine is Kandinsky, except there are sometimes even no depictions at all, just colours, forms, and lines. He’s still sometimes hard to understand for me but spending some time looking at those paintings is worth it imo

Bourdel’s Beethoven portrait (tragic mask)

As for the contemporary art, there’s some too

One of the six version of the isle of the dead painting by Arnold Böcklin, under the impression from which Rachmaninoff wrote his famous symphonic poem with the same title

The avantgarde at the time (a lot of Picasso). 1st painting makes me feel a lot of comfort honestly, the style reminds me of Chagall.

I really don’t have much to say about neither Gauguin nor Van Gogh other than that they focus a lot on the effect of colour on the viewer, so just take a look at them yourself

Impressionism and Paul Cezánne are very popular among people, including me, actually. All those vibrant and yet laconic colours!!!

I didn’t make many photos of ancient orthodox Russian art because it turned out it’s prohibited to take photos there. I hope they won’t blow up my house for those 3 pics🥺🥺

So yeah there was this neoclassical painting I liked a lot too but that’s it with the old art here.

Now comes 19-late 20th century art!!

Starting with the hall in memory of Carl Fabergé, a smaller copy of the Emperor’s crown made by Fabergé himself on the 2nd pic

Napoleon portrait on 1st pic, all the other ones I just personally liked 😭😭

I guess the 19th century was the worst century to be alive in judging by how depressive everything on the paintings from that period is. Especially that dead horse nooo whyj ;((

All these too I only personally liked too

Caspar David Friedrich isn’t really world famous but I’m a huge fan of the guy he’s so melancholic

Again a lot of very sad stuff ;((

I will say that not any less gems were among Hermitage classical artworks!

This german wood sculpture might not be very realistic but it’s still a very emotional piece. The expression of Mary’s face does look very alive. I myself wanted to do a Pieta type of sculpture for awhile tbh

This still life was very striking the way it looked like something modern for me idk

St. Mary in the centre is surrounded by people celebrating but she still looks lonely idk 😭

Hermitage actually used to have quite a lot more pieces by world famous artists like Raphael, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Van Deyk and Titian before 1930, when more than 50 paintings, a lot of which are now considered to be priceless masterpieces, were sold at international auctions to gain more money for “industrialisation” during Stalin’s regime. The paintings sold were deemed to be elitist decadence that the masses wouldn’t understand.

Anyway, some paintings by those masters still remain in the museum, but still, there could be more.

Paintings by Fra Angelico

Paintings by Sandro Botticelli

Madonna’s by Raphael Santi

Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna’s. They are actually all surprisingly small and beneath a glass so I had to use a magnifying glass to take a decent picture of them. And on top of that there was a huge crowd so I couldn’t really get much time to look at them🥲

I also love El Greco very much and he was a little bit there too!!

And Caravaggio was also there I guess

Michelangelo’s crouching boy. It’s unknown if the master intended the sculpture to be like this or if he just didn’t finish it. It’s interesting how much the pose of the boy tells about all what’s happening in his head

And Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son, the painting I was probably the most excited about seeing in the whole museum.

Unlike the Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, this one was unexpectedly large. The painting itself wasn’t commissioned by anyone, Rembrandt made his work, despite it is so large, entirely by his own wish. In the story, the son returned home in trembling guilt after having spent his father’s fortune on prostitutes and partying, wishing to work for his parents without any payment. But the father not only forgives him but cherishes his return and kills the fatted calf for him, celebrating the return and repentance of the son for his disgraceful life in the past, not at all turning against him. In the painting the father is depicted gently hugging and calming his son, who stands on his knees, while the rest of the family is depicted variously, from being surprised (the mother in the back) to the son having had returned, to judging and being indecisive about him (the brother on the left, for example). The taxman sitting to the left of the brother seems to be very deep in thought, witnessing this whole scene.

HERMITAGGGHE YAYAY

So the thing is that it’s very big actually(!). Because of that I’m firstly gonna cover the old masters’ section of the museum and then of the modern ones

Beginning with ancient Egyptian and Antique art

1st pic is the opened up inside of a sarcophagus. Kinda gross stuff but when an Egyptian died, some of their organs would be taken out and put in marble pots such as ones on the 2-3 pics. The pots were crowned with sculpture heads of gods.

Below are some other religious and decorative artworks. On the 3-5th pics are elements of tombs. The plates have sacred religious texts engraved on them. Such plates were a source of a lot of important knowledge about Ancient Egypt’s culture.

These mosaics from public canteens right here are a very very rare samples of Ancient Greek art. Most mosaics were eventually destroyed or lost completely, with only some rare cases like the Pompeii city where covered completely in heavy layers of ash and dust they remained untouched.

I was very happy to see this Jupiter I statue I wanted to see in person for a very long time. It’s also very unusual because not only has this statue remained almost entirely intact but also because it is a very interesting combination of bronze and marble in one sculpture. The artists of the Antiquity strived for as convincing realism as possible because art was supposed to help the viewers understand the myths and their meaning by making the viewers become in a way witnesses of everything happening there themselves. And I think this statue really is impressive!

Some details of the sculpture

I found this statue very interest too because in general animallistic art isn’t really a thing in older art. Let alone antiquity.

Those three sculptures resemble a very significant part of Greek history when it became conquered by Rome and experienced a kind of a national crisis and a major decline of pretty much all old ideals and beliefs, be it religion, politics or art. The philosophy of hedonism, which was the idea that a man should just enjoy his time while he’s alive, is one such new philosophies.

I was personally impressed the most by the sculpture of an unknown philosopher on the 3rd pic, he seems to be so content just looking in the distance and sitting alone in a chair without anything really surrounding nor happening around him. It’s genuinely so unusual to see such a peaceful and calm piece of art from that time. I would also really recommend to read a bit about Praxiteles on wikipedia, tho not a lot is known about him, but still it’s a good read.

The bust of Antinous below has got a very interesting backstory. The Emperor Hadrian was as a homosexual, and had a huge crush on Antinous, but when later Antinous, when on a trip to Egypt drowned in a river and upon finding out about it, he announced that the young man is now considered a god. After this announcement sculptors all around the empire, since he was now a god, started making various busts and statues of him. One of such statues is the one I saw in the museum.

So here are some pictures of the St. Isaac cathedral outside architectural elements like columns and statues and stuff

Relief sculptures on facade of some building from, judging by the style, most likely soviet era

A vase i found to be very pretty on the facade of some other building

Relief sculpture supposed to glorify Russian military (perhaps ?) built to commemorate the victory over Napoleon (The building is approximately from middle 19th century I think so it might as well be it)

Image on a building near where we stayed (Bright sun ruined the photo eh)

Really cool atlases (and some sorta infants idk) on another building not too far from the apartment. They remind of a Michelangelo sculpture I saw in Hermitage but I will post it a bit later :)

These ones are DEFINITELY soviet era sculptures guess how I figured that out :D

Locally famous horse sculptures by a bridge made by I don’t remember who tbh

Sculptures in modernist style on the “Zinger “company building (If I’m not mistaken this company still exists in the U.S.)

The Mariinsky theatre historical building

…and all the countless statues I photographed

After setting there the first place we visited was the St. Isaac cathedral. The building was awesome considering that it was constructed in the first half of the 19th century. It’s VERY impressive when seen in person, I don’t think I can describe that feeling tbh.

Aside from that it also had those high relief sculptures on the plots from the bible starting from the ones depicting the birth of Christ in the front to the crucifixion and resurrection on the other side. (I took pictures with my phone using a spyglass sorry for the quality 😭)

Architecture inside was also very amazing and expressive. It’s worth mentioning the malachite and lazurite columns are actually real. The columns like the ones on the 4th pic are from pink marble while the walls are made of Italian Carrara marble. More than 0.5% of the whole Empire budget at the time was spent on the construction of all this so yeah.

But another very interesting part are all the cathedral paintings and mosaics. In the span between 1818 and 1864 a group of 22 artists including Karl Bryullov who completed the paintings on the central dome. (Took very few pictures because it was genuinely hard to)

The silver pigeon in the very top is a common symbol of the Holy Spirit. Wingspan of the pigeon is a little larger than 2 meters so it’s actually pretty big. Below are some other paintings

I like this one very much because I accidentally made it look like he’s actually ascending lol

Creation of the sun and the moon and a more famous Michelangelo version in the Sistine chapel both on the same plot

Haven’t come up with a name for them (yes they’re non binary) yet idk

I think they would dress in male winter coats and pilot caps similar to N, and wings would have this purpleish color too.