It is in the details.

On my recent trip to Russia, I visited several art museums. The Hermitage in St. Petersburg was incredibly beautiful.  This was the palace of Empress Catherine the Great.  It is the second-largest art museum in the world, founded in 1764. The building or palace had extremely ornate detailing in all of the rooms with gold gilded doors and well just about everything was gold gilded.  It was breathtaking.  And then, there was the art-magnificent formal and detailed paintings.  Many of Royal families depicting wealth and status.  I was excited to see a lot of Rembrandts that I had never seen before even in books.  There were two DaVinci paintings as well. 

In Moscow, my favorite Art museum was The State Tretyakov Gallery.  Each and every piece in this museum was by Russian artists.  I took the closeup image above from a section in the painting titled "The Lady in Blue" by Samov. 

It is all in the little details that I truly learn from studying their colors and brush stroke styles. I have come home with immense respect for the Russian Art and artist and inspiration.  This is a trip I will never forget.