Eight galleries of NGV International have been radically reshaped to host Masterpieces from the Hermitage, invoking the world of unbounded opulence of Russia’s Catherine the Great (1729–96). The installation, designed by the NGV’s Ingrid Ruhle, is dazzling, mimicking as it does the grand style of the State Hermitage Museum and incorporating some of its decorative designs. The floors reproduce patterns which the designer studied on a special visit to the Hermitage. The wallpaper in the China gallery is a reprint of one in the NGV’s own collection; it emulates a similar design at the Hermitage itself. The dominant wall colours, changing from gallery to gallery, invite constant shifts in visual perception, as do the projected images of palace corridors, ever approaching and ever vanishing, their glowing patterns based on designs by Raphael for the Loggia at the Vatican.

The entry into the exhibition is through the first gallery – the green room – which serves in effect as an audience chamber for Catherine the Great, whose portrait by the Swedish artist Alexander Roslin dominates the room. The Empress wears an embroidered dress, with a diamond buckle fastening her imperial silk and ermine mantle. She holds in her right hand the Romanov imperial sceptre, with the celebrated large Orlov diamond. Her imperious stance is daunting, yet as she confided in a letter of 1781 to her friend Friedlich Melchior, Baron Von Grimm, ‘Roslin depicted me as a Swedish cook, coarse and simple.’ This is a portrait she did not really like.