The State Hermitage Museum

The collection of the State Hermitage includes more than three million works of art and artefacts of the world culture. Among them are paintings, graphic works, sculptures and works of applied art, archaeological finds and numismatic material.

The Hermitage Museum was started in the 18th century as a private collection of Empress Catherine II and in the 20th century became one of the largest museums in the world.

Domenico Ghirlandaio

Ghirlandaio's full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi; it appears, therefore, that his father's surname was Curradi and his grandfather's Bigordi.
Domenico, the eldest of eight children, was at first apprenticed to a jeweller or a goldsmith, most likely his own father.
The nickname "Il Ghirlandaio" (garland-maker) came to Domenico from his father, a goldsmith who was famed for creating the metallic garland-like necklaces worn by Florentine women. In his father's shop, Domenico is said to have made portraits of the passers-by, and he was eventually apprenticed to Alessio Baldovinetti to study painting and mosaic.




Ritratto di donna

What is Art?

The one characteristic of art is that one can put into it whatever one wishes, and see in it whatever one chooses to see.
The Beauty, that gives to creation its universal and aesthetic element, makes the artist a creator, and whispers of a thousand different things which were not present in the mind of him who carved the statue or painted the panel or graved the gem.
The painter shows us the mystery of the soul through the mask of the body, through conventional images he can handle ideas.