Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings The Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings in 1930 and 1931 resulted in the departure of some of the most valuable paintings from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to Western museums. Several of the paintings had been in the Hermitage Collection since its creation by Empress Catherine the Great. About 250 paintings were sold, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, and other important artists. Andrew Mellon donated the twenty-one paintings he purchased from the Hermitage to the United States government in 1937, which became the nucleus of the
Glinsk Hermitage Glinsk Hermitage The Glinsk Hermitage (formally known as the Nativity of the Theotokos Stavropegial Male Monastery) is a Russian Orthodox stavropegial monastery located in Ukraine, near the Russian border. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was a major spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church, and many of its elders have been recently canonized as saints. The monastery is under the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) in the diocese of Konotop and Hlukhiv. According to tradition, the monastery was founded in the 17th century in a wooded thicket not far from the city of Putivl, in the village