Russian Museum

It took us a while to find the Mikhailovsky Palace, but it was worth it!  This museum is one of the greats - not only paintings, but also red and gold tableware, princesses' headresses, lacquer boxes, figurines.  Our favourites among the paintings included the icons of The Archangel with the Golden Hair and Boris and Gleb, Rublev's Peter & Paul, Karl Bryullov's The Last Day of Pompeii, Vasily Smirnov's Nero's Death, Stepan Bakalovich's Praying of Khans, Nikolai Yarushenko's In Warm Lands, Genrikh Semiradsky's Purina at the Poseidon Celebration in Elusium, Nicholas Ge's The Last Supper, Repin's Barge-Haulers on the Volga, The Zaporozhe Cossacks Writing A Mocking Letter to the Sultan, portrait of Tolstoy with bare feet (which we saw at the From Russia exhibition at the Royal Academy), Sadko and Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council, 7 May 1901, Vasily Surikov's Yermak's Conquest of Siberia and Suvorov Crossing the Alps (the soldiers tobogganing down), Vereshchagin's At the Entrance to the Mosque and In Jerusalem, The Royal Tombs, Arkhip Kuindzhi's landscapes, Filip Malyavin's Two Girls, Vervka and Peasant Women Dancing, Serov's society portraits (esp. of Princess Zinaida Yusupova), Mikhail Nesterov's The Great Taking of the Veil, Leon Bakst's Antique Terrors and Boris Kustodiev's At Shrovetide.  The model for the head of Falconet's Bronze Horseman is also in one of the halls and you can go and look it in the eye.

Vasily Surikov,
Surinov Crossing the Alps

Boris Kustodiev,
At Shrovetide