Gosudarstvennyĭ, Ėrmitazh. Plan of the Hermitage Museum with guide to the rooms.

(Leningrad): Edition of the Hermitage Museum, 1929.  First edition.  Softcover.  17.5cm by 12.3cm.  23 pages. An early guide to the Hermitage Museum, which was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum has been open to the public since 1852. In 1928, the Soviet government ordered the Hermitage to compile a list of valuable works of art for export. From 1930 to 1934, over two thousand works of art from the Hermitage collection were clandestinely sold at auctions abroad or directly to foreign officials and businesspeople. The sold items included Raphael’s Alba Madonna, Titian’s Venus with a Mirror, and Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation, among other world known masterpieces by Botticelli, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and others. In 1931 Andrew W. Mellon acquired 21 works of art from the Hermitage and later donated them to form a nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.  Catalogue is in very good condition with fold-out plan of the museum, and details of the artworks held in each room.  Pages mostly uncut.  Scarce WorldCat locates just two copies.