Masterpieces of the Hermitage-Volume 5 (1992)

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General		Extras
Category	Art	Gallery-Photo Notes-History
Rating
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	83:10 (Case: 85)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	L. Schwartz
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	R. Parsons
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	?	Music	None Given

    The State Hermitage Museum of St Petersburg is one of the largest museums in the world, with a collection of around 3,000,000 works of art. It is housed in seven buildings constructed by Catherine the Great and her successors, starting in the mid-Eighteenth Century. Following the construction of the Winter Palace, Catherine decided she wanted a smaller, less formal building to hold balls and parties. This new building was known as the Hermitage, literally the dwelling place of a hermit, after the French fashion.

    The fifth disc in this series looks at the collections of paintings from the 17th century, and like the fourth disc, is quite interesting and informative. Again, this disc is narrated by R. Parsons.

    The three episodes on this disc are:

17th Century Flemish Painting (27:42)

    This interesting episode depicts the works of Rubens, Van Dyck, Brouwer, Jordaens, Snyders and others.

Rembrandt and the 17th Century Dutch Masters (27:23)

    While the collection has a small number of paintings by Rembrandt, it also has works by many of his Dutch contemporaries, such as Hals, Steen, Ter Borch and van Ruisdael.

Velazquez, El Greco, Goya and the Spanish Masters (28:04)

    This episode covers the Spanish part of the collection, which has only one Goya, but several paintings by Velazquez, El Greco, de Morales and others.

Video

    As with the other discs in this series, the video quality is quite disappointing.

    The video is presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, being a series made for television.

    Most of the time, the video is not sharp. This has the look of being transferred from a video master. At times, it looks as if it was transferred from a VHS copy, but thankfully most of the time this is not the case. Shadow detail is not really an issue with this sort of material.

    Colour is somewhat muted, but I suspect that this is due to the colour of a lot of the works of art, which have faded over the years. Bright colours appear when paintings and frescoes that include such colours are presented, though as I am not familiar with the originals, I cannot comment on the fidelity of the image to the original.

    There is some grain present, particularly in the opening and closing sequences, which are repeated from episode to episode and look different to the rest of the material, as if they were from a different source, such as stock footage. This footage also has some film artefacts, such as dirt and black flecks.

    This transfer is badly affected by aliasing throughout. The museum's interior comprises a lot of intricate straight and curved lines, especially the door surrounds, the ceilings and the balustrades. So do most of the artworks. As the camera rarely remains still, this continual movement brings out aliasing in almost every shot, with some examples being at 5:01, 11:38 and 19:10. This makes a lot of the video difficult to watch. This may be less of an issue with small display devices.

    There is also a problem with some of the darker works, particularly those that are dark brown. There appears to be a sort of thin gauze over the image, resulting in a scaly appearance to the image. Some of the more obvious examples are at 52:24 and 56:18.

    There are also some minor video tracking errors, for example at 29:37.

    No subtitles are provided on this single-layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    As in the other discs in this series, there is a loud hum present throughout, possibly due to interference during the recording process. It is not dissimilar to the background hum you get from a record player or turntable. This is annoying at times, although as it is continuous, the ear adjusts to a point.

    There is one audio track, in English Dolby Digital 2.0.

    Dialogue is generally clear and easy to understand, the narrator's foibles notwithstanding. Audio sync is not an issue.

    Classical music excerpts are played in the background. The sound is a little thin and the dynamic range is that of video. Not all of the musical excerpts complement the images, but this is not a major distraction.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Gallery

    10 photographs of Flemish and Dutch paintings. Of minor interest, if only to see them without aliasing.

History

    Five pages of history relating to the acquisition of artworks by Alexander I, and the construction of another Hermitage building. The grammar as usual is not always very good, and the information provided is not detailed, so this extra is really not worth very much.

    This series has been released as a 2 disc set in Region 1. I have not been able to locate any reviews of this set to determine whether the transfer is better or the same, so at this time the best version cannot be determined.

    An interesting series of programmes about the massive art collection held by the Hermitage Museum, spoiled by the transfer.

    The video quality is very poor.

    The audio quality would have been satisfactory if it was not for the omnipresent hum.

    The extras are not substantial.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall