Benois Madonna

Leonardo da Vinci · 1480

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State Hermitage Museum

Saint Petersburg · Founded 1764

Two Leonardo Madonnas and Rembrandt's Prodigal Son, in the Winter Palace of the Russian tsars. Catherine the Great started it in 1764 with a single purchase, and it now holds more paintings than any museum on earth.

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Visitors a year: 1764
Founded: Closed Mon
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What to see

Benois Madonna
Leonardo da Vinci · 1480
The Benois Madonna, otherwise known as the Madonna and Child with Flowers, is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. One of two Madonnas begun by Leonardo in October 1478, it was completed c.

Madonna Litta
Leonardo da Vinci · 1490
The Madonna Litta is a late 15th-century painting, by Leonardo da Vinci, in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. It depicts the Virgin Mary breastfeeding the Christ child, a devotional subject known as the Madonna lactans.

The Return of the Prodigal Son
Rembrandt · 1668
The Return of the Prodigal Son is an oil painting by Rembrandt, part of the collection of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. It is among the Dutch master's final works, likely completed within two years of his death in 1669. Depicting the moment of the prodigal son's return to his father in the Biblical parable, it is a renowned work described by art historian Kenneth Clark as "a picture which those who have seen the original in St. Petersburg may be forgiven for claiming as the greatest picture ever painted".

The Lunch
Diego Velázquez · 1617
The Farmers' Lunch is one of the earliest paintings by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez. Painted in oil on canvas in 1617, it combines a still life of food and drink with a depiction of three comic farmers, whose physiognomy the artist studies closely. The composition shows a younger man gesturing with his right hand to reinforce the story coming from his half-open lips, and an older man listening attentively while holding his cup up to a woman so she can refill it with wine. The still life includes fish, bread, a carrot, a lemon, and a copper vessel.

Pazyryk carpet
The Pazyryk burials are a number of Scythian (Saka) Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley and the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia; the site is close to the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Numerous comparable burials have been found in neighbouring western Mongolia.

Madonna and Child (The Conestabile Madonna)
Raphael · 1504
The Conestabile Madonna is a small painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, executed c. 1504.

The collections

Egyptian antiquities

Since 1940, the Egyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and including the former Castiglione Collection, has occupied a large hall on the ground floor in the eastern part of the Winter Palace.

Classical antiquities

The collection of classical antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage buildings.

Prehistoric art

On the ground floor in the western wing of the Winter Palace the collections of prehistoric artefacts and the culture and art of the Caucasus are located, as well as the second treasure gallery.

Jewellery and decorative art

Four small rooms on the ground floor, enclosed in the middle of the New Hermitage between the room displaying Classical Antiquities, comprise the first treasure gallery, featuring western jewellery from the 4th millennium BC to the early 20th century AD.

Italian Renaissance

The rooms on the first floor of the Old Hermitage were designed by Andrei Stackenschneider in revival styles in between 1851 and 1860, although the design survives only in some of them.

Italian and Spanish fine art

The first floor of New Hermitage contains three large interior spaces in the centre of the museum complex with red walls and lit from above by skylights.

Knights' Hall

The Knights' Hall, a large room in the eastern part of the New Hermitage originally designed in the Greek revival style for the display of coins, now hosts a collection of Western European arms and armour from the 15th, 17th centuries, part of the Hermitage Arsenal collection.

Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque

The rooms and galleries along the southern facade and in the western wing of the New Hermitage are now entirely devoted to Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting of the 17th century, including the large collections of Van Dyck, Rubens and Rembrandt.