The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is a museum complex housing one of the largest collections of international art in Russia. Today, its collection contains approximately 700,000 works from various eras, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the early 21st century. Among the Museum’s exceptional holdings is its collection of 19th- and 20th-century French art, one of the most renowned in the world.
The permanent exhibition in the Museum’s Main Building presents international art from various countries and eras, from ancient times to the early 19th century. This includes an extensive collection of tinted plaster casts of works from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, as well as original paintings, sculpture, graphic art, and decorative and applied art. Of particular interest are the monuments of Ancient Egypt, the treasures discovered by Heinrich Schliemann during the excavations of Troy, and the works of outstanding European artists of the Renaissance and Modern Period—Sandro Botticelli, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, El Greco, Nicolas Poussin, and Antoine Watteau. The main building of the museum was built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries according to the design of the architect R.I. Klein. The museum interiors play an important role in immersing visitors in a particular historical era—the architectural design of the halls corresponds to the exhibits presented in them. The exhibition continues in the Gallery of European and American Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
