Hermitage photos

A lion guards the exit to Palace Square

A gold deer made by the Scythians, prehistoric inhabitants of Russia. If you think it's brooch-sized, think again. Having seen photos of it before visiting, that was my assumption, but it's actually pretty big.

The lovely Leger

I tend to enjoy Picasso's ceramics more than most of his paintings

Rodin, of course

Gallery of Roman statues - eyes front, boys!

A pretty painted ceiling

Raphael's The Virgin & Child with the Beardless St Joseph - or something along those lines

Perugino rather tackily signed his name on the arrow piercing St Sebastian's neck!

Pretty marble interior

The throne room

The beautiful gold hall - where you weren't meant to take photos heh heh - stand in the doorway, works a treat

I think this was Empress Elizabeth's sitting room or something along those lines

"I'll give that lobster a damn good thrashing if it's the last thing I do!"

The Large Skylight Room

Probably cause I'm blessed with skin of the olive persuasion myself, I'm never actually too fussed about tanning - artificially or otherwise. But come on! These lot could, I'm quite sure, induce snow-blindness. Get thee to a sunbed! This is, by the way, by Giulio Romano, an artist I'm always excited to see thanks to his extensive name-checking in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. (Geek) (That reminds me, just last night my sister aired a theory that I may be the product of an affair with an [imaginary] black mailman. This is a new one, my siblings' favoured line when I was young was that I was adopted from a Maori family up north. Charming. This is not to say that there would be anything wrong with that, just that perhaps it's not helpful for a child to be told falsely told they're adopted by their brother and sister)

The revenge of the animals on the hunter - see the post above for more

Close up of the hunter's punishment - dragged before the lion to be judged in the top panel, roasted on the fire to the left of the bottom panel, while his dogs are hanged in the centre

Cool trompe l'oeil painting

A sculpture by, well, somebody. It's nice, anyway.

Hall of ? Renaissance (or later) sculptures

Painted ceiling in the hallway pictured below

A hallway in the Hermitage - would you not pay just for the interiors?

A Michelangelo statue in the middle of a gorgeous room - wall frescoes I think by Raphael's workshop, but don't quote me on that

Egyptian room at the Hermitage

Freakily - although probably accurately - young-looking Virgin Mary by Leonardo

Can't be bothered doing a big blog entry as yet. Went out to Tsarskoe Selo, the Tsars' country estate/palace outside St P on Sunday. There was snow, it was pretty. All of Monday taken up flying to Manchester. And now here I am in Carnforth - bright lights, big city. Today we went down to Haworth and the Bronte Museum was closed d'oh. I got my hair cut again at long last - farewell 'the poodle'. And that's about all of interest that I can be stuffed writing right now.