Getting Luca Giordano's enormous Sleeping Bacchus from Saint Petersburg to Norfolk was heart stopping to say the least. "The crate would not fit through the door," said Thierry Morel, recalling an early nightmare during the installation of one of the most remarkable art shows taking place in the UK this year.
After two hours it was realised the only thing to get the thing in was break the rules and uncrate it outside before 10 men heaved it into the Stone Hall of one of England's grandest country houses. "It was literally my finger between the door frame and the painting."
Morel is the curator of something that will only happen once. More than 70 paintings, mostly from the Hermitage, are being exhibited at Houghton Hall as they would have been more than 200 years ago.
The works, which include paintings by Rembrandt, Poussin, Van Dyck and Velásquez, were once in the ownership of Britain's first prime minister, Robert Walpole.
Houghton was built with the art collection in mind and it was the finest in the land – they were stupendous works bought and displayed with "ambition and intelligence and taste", said Morel.
In 1779, 34 years after Walpole, the family was in a mess because of the profligacy of his grandson. It led to the unthinkable: sell the paintings to the highest bidder, which is how they arrived in Russia, bought as a job lot by Catherine the Great for the then vast sum of £40,555.
The sale, negotiated by Christie's founder James Christie, caused an outcry but Catherine was delighted. She wrote to one friend: "Your humble servant has already got her claws on them and will no more let them go than a cat would a mouse."
About three years ago Morel, formerly the director of the London Friends of the Hermitage, had the idea of trying to get as many as them back to Houghton as possible. Remarkably, it happened.
Helped by drawings of the hang that the house's owner, the Marquess of Cholmondeley, had found in Walpole's desk, the paintings have been put back in rooms as they were.
Most are from the Hermitage but the display, or recreation, includes paintings that were dispersed to other parts of Russia such as Siberia with a painting of Apollo and Daphne by Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari on loan from the Perm State Art Gallery.
There have been some amazing discoveries such as the original frame for Poussin's The Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and John the Baptist, which was being used to frame a picture at Houghton that did not quite fit.
And there has been tricky negotiation, admitted Morel. For example, Carlo Maratta's The Judgment of Paris normally hangs on the ceiling of the staircase at the imperial palace at Tsarskoye Selo and that is where it is meant to stay.
"It was one of the most complicated works to obtain for the exhibition," said Morel.
"I was told no, this picture will never leave the palace, so it took a lot of time to convince the director it would be essential for the show and to my great joy she finally agreed."
This summer visitors will be able to see it hang in The Carlo Maratta Room and there are many other joys – such as a pair of Van Dyck's finest portraits, of Sir Thomas Wharton and Henry Danvers, Earl of Danby; and a small but magnificent portrait of Pope Innocent X by Velásquez.
The show was formally opened by Prince Charles and will open to the public on 17 May, running through to 29 September.
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