Sculptures from Peter the Great’s Collection

The exhibition in the Moorish Hall of the Hermitage’s Winter Palace displays 19 sculptures from Peter I’s collection.

Peter assembled a collection of more than 250 works, of which around two-thirds have survived. Mostly comprising sculptures by Peter’s European contemporaries, it also included a number of antiques, such as Venus in Taurus by a Greek master from the 2^nd century BC.

Until Peter’s reforms in the end of the 17th century, secular sculpture was prohibited in Russia by the Orthodox Church.