She was the most powerful woman in the world. He maintained correspondence for years with the leading philosophers of the time. He wrote plays, memoirs and works of children’s literature. He embraced scientific innovation and oversaw one of the first mass vaccinations for smallpox. And, of course, it expanded the Russian Empire.
Catherine the Great, who ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796, has been the subject of much academic attention and, most recently, inspiration for many television series, according to Town & Country.
In 1764, she began her passion for art and later ended up with one of the most important collections in the world, now housed in the Hermitage State Museum in St. Petersburg, which was founded by her under the design of the French architect Vallene de la Mont.
According to her own description, she was “insatiable” when she was going to buy a painting and spend millions of rubles as she sent the message to European leaders that Russia had an equal position. He bought more than 4,000 paintings, as well as countless statues and elaborate automation works.
Russian courtiers ran to help the empress with her new passion. Gregory Potemkin, the Russian prince, military leader and longtime lover of Catherine, helped her acquire the “Peacock Clock”.
Today the Hermitage is the largest museum in the world and houses more than 3 million works of art. The main complex includes the Winter Palace (the former residence of the Romanov family) and various smaller buildings, such as the Small Hermitage and the Hermitage Theater.
The museum has been open to the public since 1852. However, it started as a private collection. Catherine set up works of art and libraries in the “Little Hermitage”, a pavilion she had built next to the Winter Palace, where she could host theatrical performances, and dinners around a huge table covered in silver and Wedgwood porcelain.
The table had a mechanism where he brought the dishes from the kitchen and thus allowed Catherine and her guests to talk freely without fear of being overheard by their servants.
But these majestic buildings, which were ideal for hosting royal events and housing rare works of art and exquisite tapestries, had great enemies, the mice.
Peter the Great’s daughter, Empress Elizabeth, was the first to sign a decree ordering “the best cats, the largest, capable of catching mice, to be sent to the courtyard of this Majesty” to be found in Kazan. Since then there are cats in and around the Hermitage, in the basements and on their own Instagram page.
After the death of Catherine II of Russia, the winter palaces were abandoned as imperial residence by her successor, Peter I, who did not support the strengthening of the museum, enriching his collection with only two new paintings.
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