The Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg

Tsar Nicholas I commissioned 128 delightful watercolors depicting views and interiors of the private and state apartments of the Winter Palace, the main imperial residence of Saint Petersburg. These watercolors together make up one of the jewels of the collections of the Hermitage Museum. Of immense documentary value, they are also - with their crystalline clarity and their irresistible elegance - dazzling examples of the graphic art of the nineteenth century. Immortalizing as they do the splendor of the first palace of the Russian sovereigns, they are of immeasurably greater interest than other works of decorative art of this type. In a technical tour de force, these artists contrived to depict space in such a way that their paintings present a broader perspective than could normally be taken in by the naked eye.