The Hermitage Museum
It is generally believed that the Hermitage was established as a museum in 1764, when Catherine II purchased a collection belonging to a local merchant, which included 225 canvases by renowned Western European masters. Today, the Hermitage collection, which has been put together over the course of more than two centuries, numbers about three million exhibits! The Hermitage’s collection of Italian paintings competes with some of the world’s most famous Italian collections by virtue of the quality of the works on display and the renown of the men who created them, including Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto, and most famously Leonardo da Vinci, whose paintings The Madonna Benois and The Madonna Litta hang in the Museum. The Hermitage’s collection of Dutch and Flemish arts also rank among the greatest in the world and include the works of Rembrandt, van Rijn, Adriaen van Ostade, Gerard Terborch, and Peter Paul Rubens. Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, two of the greatest artist of the 20th century are also represented in the Hermitage.