Exhibition Review A Collection Worthy of a Cosmopolitan Patron of the Arts: Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great

Abstract

There is, perhaps, no more appropriate exhibition within recent memory to display the 'cosmopolitan moment' of Enlightenment art patronage and collecting than Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great. Touted as a 'sweeping survey of art from the Russian court', the exhibition provided visitors with the most extraordinary glimpse into to the cosmopolitan taste of Catherine II, who ruled Russia for 34 years, between 1762 and 1796. Her reign spanned the period of Enlightenment and the revolutions that Enlightenment thinking gave rise to in America and France. A frequent correspondent with French philosophes, such as Voltaire and Diderot, she became disillusioned with Enlightenment ideas following the imprisonment and execution of Louis XVI and the violence of the Terror. Her collections, nevertheless, stand as visual evidence of her interest in art, not only as an extension of her grandeur as a ruler, which was typical of the age of absolutism, but also as the material expression of her intellectual curiosity and openness to other cultures.