Without knowing it, she made fine bargains, for these gleanings included eleven hundred pieces by Raphael, Poussin, Vandyck, Rembrandt, and other perennials, whose value has grown with the advance of time and the retreat of currency. Through Grimm and Diderot (whose Salons she followed carefully) she gave commissions to French artists—Vernet, Chardin, Houdon. She had life-size copies made of Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican, and built a special gallery for them in the Hermitage.
