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| workshop of Hyacinthe Rigaud Portrait of Louis XIV ca. 1701 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Marc Nattier Portrait of young woman in gray ca. 1715-20 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau La Boudeuse ca. 1718 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Degraded to the existential minimum of my brain, I was forced to retreat from my own books and those of my teachers. The result of this degradation, which always leads to catastrophic conditions at the back of my head, is that I can bear nothing any more. Always close to going completely mad, but not completely mad, I then control my brain only to the extent of horrible commands to my hands and feet, for special ordinations of my body. But what I most feared in this house and of which I did not report the least thing to my brother in America, on the contrary, I wrote to him twice a week, as agreed, I was doing well, I was grateful to him, I was making progress with my studies as with my health, I loved his house and everything around it, but what I most feared in Unterach, was the twilight, and the darkness which quickly followed after twilight. It's about this twilight that I'm talking here. About this darkness. Not about the causes of this twilight, of this darkness, not about its causalities, but solely about how this twilight and this darkness in Unterach affect me. But as I see it, at the moment I don't at all have the strength to concern myself with this subject as a problem, as a problem for me, and I want to restrict myself only to outlines, and altogether I want to limit myself solely to the twilight in Unterach and to the darkness in Unterach in relation to me in the condition in which I find myself in Unterach. I have, after all, no time whatsoever for a study, because my head, because the sickness of my head, claims the whole of my attention, the whole of my existence. In my room I cannot bear the twilight and the darkness following the twilight in Unterach, consequently, every day, when the twilight draws in the darkness in this ghastly mountain atmosphere, I run out of my room and out of the house onto the road. I then have only three possibilities: either to walk in the direction of Parschallen or in the direction of Burgau or in the direction of Mondsee. But I have never yet walked in the direction of Mondsee, because I fear this direction, the whole time I've only walked in the direction of Burgau; but today, all at once, I walked in the direction of Parschallen. In the twilight (here already very early, already at half past four!), because of my illness, my cephalalgy, which has been tormenting me now for four years, I was out of my room into the hall into the darkness onto the road, and because, obeying a sudden signal from my head, I wanted to inflict even greater torture on myself than on preceding days, not towards Burgau, as has been my habit since staying in Unterach, but toward the ugly village of Parschallen, where there are eight butchers, although there are less than a hundred people in the village, just imagine: eight butchers and less than a hundred people . . . I wanted to induce not only the Burgau exhaustion but the much greater Parschallen exhaustion, I wanted to sleep, to fall asleep, to at last fall asleep once more. But now, because I've resolved to write down these sentences, there can be no further thought whatsoever of falling asleep. For today a Parschallen exhaustion appeared to me advantageous, so I walked in the direction of Parschallen."
– from the story collection Prose, originally published by Thomas Bernhard in 1967, translated by Martin Chalmers and published in English by Seagull Books in 2010
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| Noël-Nicolas Coypel Birth of Venus 1732 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Carle Van Loo Perseus and Andromeda ca. 1735-40 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Baptiste Van Loo Portrait of Sir Robert Walpole 1740 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Robert Tournières Portrait of an unknown woman as Hebe ca. 1740 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Pierre Subleyras Emperor Valens before Bishop Basil ca. 1743-47 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Baptiste Perronneau Portrait of a boy with a book (the painter's brother) ca. 1745-46 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Honoré Fragonard Sketch for The Stolen Kiss ca. 1760 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée Roman Charity ca. 1760-62 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Claude-Joseph Vernet Storm by Rocky Shore 1763 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin Still-life with attributes of the arts 1766 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Baptiste Le Prince Visit to a Palmist ca. 1775 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |