The Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg has one of the world's great
collections of Greek vases. In addition to the numerous vases and
fragments found on Russian territory, it includes those found in Italy
and acquired directly or purchased from other collectors, most notably
the Marquis Campana, Antonio Giuseppe Pizzati and Countess Laval. The
history of this part of the Hermitage collection of vases has never
before been told in full. Taking Ludolf Stephani's catalogue of 1869,
Die Vasensammlung der Kaiserlichen Ermitage, as a starting point and
studying a vast body of previously ignored archive documents, the
authors (two of them curators of Greek vases in the Hermitage Museum)
follow the formation of the collection up to 1869, establishing its
sources and identifying a number of previously under-estimated or
ignored Russian collectors of antiquities. The Hermitage collection is
set not only within the Russian cultural context but within the wider
picture of a pan-European interest in antiquities and their display.
Since Stephani's catalogue is still the main source for scholars of
vases and vase collections, the book includes a valuable list of addenda
and corrigenda to the provenances he provides for vases from private
collections (those found during excavations on Russian territory are
largely correct).
