The State Hermitage Publishing House has bought out a new book – Greko-Rimskaia skul’ptura v sobrannii Ermitazha [Greco-Roman Sculpture in the Hermitage Collection] (Saint Petersburg, 2020 – 392 pp., illus.).
The author is Liudmila Ivanovna Davydova, Candidate of Art Studies, researcher in the Department of Classical Antiquity and keeper of the ancient sculpture, professor in the Foreign Art Department of the I.E. Repin Saint Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of the Russian Academy of Arts.
The publication has a foreword by the General Director of the State Hermitage, Professor Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, entitled “Greece, Rome, Hermitage”:
“Liudmila Ivanovna’s book tells in an engaging manner about a truth that is well-known, but not always remembered – we see Antiquity chiefly in Roman copies of Greek originals, transformed by time, having lost their bright colours, sometimes with peculiar restorations carried out in the Modern Era, and in the light of European theories and established conceptions of what Classical art ought to be as a reference point for European artistic taste.”
What makes the mystery of Greco-Roman sculpture? What is its nature? Why does viewing the works of the ancient stone-carvers cause us to fall under the influence of their charms? Such questions seem superfluous – so captivating are the ideal shapes and execution of the works.
The book immerses the reader in some amazing scholarly adventures. There is the story of the Hermitage’s acquisitional efforts, involving dramatic clashes and battles over collections and also the extraordinary figures who assembled them. There are scholarly debates over attributions and dating, There is the fascinating tale of the creation and distribution of Roman replicas that transmutes into the fundamentally important discussion of the problems surrounding copies, repetitions and large-scale reproduction. There is the history of restoration and of the modification of authentic works to meet some commercial or aesthetic ideal. Finally, there are some remarkable scholarly discoveries.
The richly illustrated publication is aimed at anyone with an interest in the art of the Ancient World. The book’s uniqueness lies in it being the most up-to-date scholarly account at present not only of the collection of Hermitage antiquities, but also of the history of plastic art in Ancient Greece, including a detailed description of the sculptors’ materials, techniques and tools.
The book is already on sale on the bookstalls of the Main Museum Complex and the bookshop in the General Staff building, as well as through the Hermitage shop on the Internet.
