ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIAN FEDERATION.- 101 stained glass pieces kept since 1946 at the Hermitage make up a rarest extant ensemble of the 14th century which before 1943 decorated three windows in the altar of Marienkirche. The church dedicated to the Virgin Mary was founded in the 12th century and is now a complex structure built over a few centuries. A single ensemble of stained glass compositions was created in the 14th century in three of the seven altar windows. The left window was devoted to themes from the Genesis, the central one, where scenes from the Old and New Testaments are put side by side, illustrate the so-called Bible of the Poor, while the right window shows episodes from the Antichrist's life. Each of the three altar windows contained 39 stained glass fragments; 37 of them showed particular scenes. In 1826-1830 the church and its stained glass were restored by the atelier of the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel.



In the summer of 1943, when the allied aviation started to bomb Frankfurt an der Oder continuously, the stained glass was dismantled. It was transferred to Potsdam to stay there till the capitulation of the Third Reich. In 1946 the Marienkirche stained glass was taken to the Soviet Union and passed to the Hermitage where it was kept in a special storage area over 50 years.

In 2001 a group headed by Director Mikhail B. Piotrovsky was created at the Hermitage to examine the stained glass, publish examination results and organize an exhibition of this work of art. The group includes three restorers, three medieval art historians and a specialist in glass chemistry. 15 stained glass fragments restored by April 2002 will be showed at the Hermitage.