I don’t know much about art but I know what I like.
Actually, that’s not true. I studied art history. In Australia. Do you know how crazy it is to study the culture of places you’ve never been and write about paintings you’ve never seen? Very crazy. I learnt more in two months of travel through Paris, Venice, Florence and London, than I did in three years of antipodean university.
For example, the Mona Lisa is very small. And many masterpieces of Renaissance paintings are painted onto walls between other artworks in dark churches still full of the faithful (and a lot of tourists).
Of course, Australia has great art, and some very good galleries. But they didn’t teach us about that. It was all slides of works from the other side of the world. I wish I’d got on that plane sooner. And I wish somebody had given me a guide to Europe’s top art museums. So here’s my own version.
The Hermitage, St Petersburg
This Hermitage really is the bees’ knees! Wow! Housed in the Winter Palace of Peter the Great, residence of the Russian tsars, it takes your breath away. There are over 3 million items in the collection. We wandered in a fairly unstructured way (what a surprise) and looked at incredible paintings, then ended up seeing royal sleds and carriages, which honestly changed my world view—no wonder there was a revolution—and made me fantasize of fur hats and being sped through the falling snow.
When I realized how much important world art Russia actually possesses I was amazed. I shouldn’t have been given that half the reproductions in those books I studied told me the work was in The Hermitage Collection. Gifts? Purchases? Who knows. But the Western Art collection alone fills 120 rooms across four of The Hermitage buildings. Wear very, very comfortable shoes. If you like art even a little bit, make the trip to The Hermitage. It is a life experience—their claim to have one of the finest collections in Europe is not an exaggeration. And St Petersburg is worth visiting in its own right. Beautiful.
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