Esteban Murillo's "The Immaculate Conception"
St Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum is happy to be able to give its Spanish masterpieces the treatment they deserve once more.
After two-and-a-half years of hanging in temporary halls, 14 canvases by great Spanish painters from the 15th to 19th centuries are back in the rooms designed for them in 1851 by Leo von Klenze.
The Hermitage's excellent collection of pre-modern Spanish artwork includes pieces from El Greco, Velazquez, Goya and others.
They had hung in three rooms in the center of the New Hermitage section of the Large Hermitage building which forms part of the four-building complex known as the Hermitage museum.
Von Klenze designed these rooms with a complete absence of windows. Uniform color schemes and the use of skylights provided evenly diffused lighting, displaying works such as El Greco's imposing "The Apostles Peter and Paul" to best effect.
But 140 plus years took their toll on the original furnishings and the paintings were suffering -- and not just in an artistic sense.
The aging glass in the skylights was providing inadequate protection from the sun's rays for the paintings.
El Greco and Co were therefore banished to three rather poky rooms for their own well-being.
Now, they are back where they belong, in surroundings more uplifting than ever.
In addition to replacing the skylights, the Hermitage has had the walls and ceilings repainted and the wooden parquet floor has been reworked to its full luxurious glory.
The top of the walls are once more adorned with stucco moulding, gilding and relief medallions of 20 famous Spanish painters.
Velazquez' seamy "Luncheon," Murillo's "Boy with a Dog," and "The Immaculate Conception," and Goya's "Portrait of the Actress Antonia Zarate," can be viewed the way Von Klenze and his master Nicholas I intended.