Guests in Vienna: The Hermitage in St. Petersburg shows fourteen masterpieces in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.

Botticelli, Tintoretto, Rembrandt and van Dyck are just four of the big names whose works have found their way from St. Petersburg to Vienna and will be on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (KHM) this summer. Of course, works by these gentlemen are on permanent display in the KHM anyway. But in the context of the exhibition "The Hermitage as Guest", fourteen Viennese paintings are juxtaposed with those of the world-famous art collection of Catherine the Great (1729-1796). The show thus offers an overview of European painting history from the Renaissance to Early Classicism.

The exhibition is introduced by two religious Renaissance works by Sandro Botticelli and Albrecht Altdorfer. Important paintings by the Holbein brothers, Bartholomäus Spranger, and Hans von Aachen come together from the northern art landscapes. Paintings by Nicholas Poussin and Bernardo Strozzi date back to the first decades of the Roman Baroque. The "Golden Age" of Dutch and Flemish art is represented by Rembrandt, Franz Hals, Jan Steen, Rubens and van Dyck. Finally, with Thomas Gainsborough and Philipp Hackert, artists of English and Prussian origin can be seen.

Both the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the KHM have world-famous picture galleries. The Russian tsars and the Habsburg emperors preferred to collect paintings with historical subjects or themes of classical mythology. A special focus of the exhibition is also on the staging of personalities.

The Hermitage as Guest. Masterpieces from Botticelli to van Dyck, June 6 - September 2, 2018
www.khm.at