Waldhauer and Ermitage’s ancient philosophers

The article continues the author’s research on the iconography of ancient philosophers. This time attention is drawn to the ancient philosophers of the main museum of Russia, the Hermitage. The author carefully and in detail talks about how his antique collection was formed during the 18th-19th centuries, dwelling on interesting and important pages in the history of the reception of ancient culture and art in Russia (especially highlighting in this regard the purchase of the collection of the Marquis Campana in 1861). Of central importance in this story is the personality of Oscar Ferdinandovich Waldhauer (1883-1935), one of the most important figures in Russian study of ancient art and museology throughout history, who largely determined the high level of presentation and research of the Hermitage’s ancient collection. The author believes that this personality is still underestimated and seeks to emphasize his great role in the domestic and European study of ancient art, especially sculpture, in particular, portrait images of ancient philosophers. In the article, through reference to the key works of O.F. Waldhauer reveals the peculiarities of his understanding of the ancient portrait. The author explores in more detail the history, formation of the image, iconography, problems of attribution, stylistic features, analogues of the busts of Socrates and Demosthenes , together with the headless statues of an unknown philosopher and a seated philosophe r that did not belong to them, but were artificially connected at the beginning of the 19th century (the separation of which was carried out just Waldhauer); statues of a seated philosopher ; and a bust of a Stoic philosopher, possibly Cleanthes .