Ten years ago (okay, maybe eleven) I stepped foot in one of the most extraordinary and fascinating structures every built by mankind. I knew very little about it; in fact, I’d never heard of it until I met my husband. “The Hermitage?” I had said. “What is that?” “Oh, it’s amazing,” my husband replied. And it was. The walls were lined with ornate patterns weaving in and out of each other; trim inlaid with gold adorned the most magnificent architecture I’d ever laid eyes on. Not only that, but it was a museum, filled to the brim with the treasures of Leonardo da Vinci, Rafael, Simone Martini, Peter Paul Reubens, Jean-Honore Fragonard, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Michelangelo, Antonio Canova (my favorite!), Auguste Rodin, and Jean-Antoine Houdon. And these exhibits are just the icing on the cake. We were lucky, while there, to find that the Hermitage was hosting an exhibition of ancient Egypt, including mummy corpses and Egy
Michael Aaron Hall, Sculpting in Bronze and Stone