Gates Acquires Rights To Hermitage Images

Corbis Corp., the digital media company owned by Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, said Monday it has reached an agreement covering artwork from The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The non-exclusive agreement, to include images of the museum’s vast collection of art and historical artifacts in Corbis’ digital archives, will allow Corbis to license the images to publishers and use them in Corbis products. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Corbis already has agreements with a number of art museums, including The National Gallery in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the State Russian Museum, the Seattle Art Museum and the Kimbell Art Museum.

Last month, the privately held company bought The Bettmann Archive, one of the world’s largest photo collections.

The Hermitage has one of the largest and most important art collections in the world, including about 3 million works. It has renowned collections of French impressionist and postimpressionist paintings; French, Spanish and Northern European paintings by old masters; and Italian and Northern European Renaissance paintings. It also has some of the world’s most important ancient art.

Gates founded Corbis in 1989 to create new uses and markets for digital images. With the purchase of the Bettman Archives, Corbis expanded its collection to more than 16 million photos and thousands of other art images.