The "Picture House" building was constructed according to the project of the workshop of architect F. B. Rastrelli in the mid-18th century. This small building served from 1754 to 1761 as a venue for the court theater, an art collection, a library, and a cabinet of curiosities of Grand Duke Peter Fyodorovich.

From 1754 to 1761, this small building housed the court theater, an art collection, a library, and a cabinet of curiosities of Grand Duke Peter Fyodorovich and was one of the vivid examples of a universal private collection of the 18th century. Five halls are open: the Two-Light Hall, the Picture Hall, the Cabinet-Library, and two rooms of the Kunstkamera. The pictorial decoration of the Picture and Two-Light Halls features more than 80 paintings by Western European masters of the 16th-18th centuries from the museum's collections. Thanks to the preserved inventories and schemes of the original tapestry arrangement, compiled by Jakob Stählin in 1762, it was possible to identify and return five original paintings from Peter Fyodorovich’s collection to their historical places.

In the Kunstkamera of the Picture House, visitors can get acquainted with Chinese decorative and applied arts of the late 17th–18th centuries, including authentic items from Peter Fyodorovich’s collection. The Grand Duke’s collection of rarities, alongside natural science, mineralogical, and numismatic collections, included a significant number of Chinese "curiosities." Throughout the 18th century, interest in China and Chinese culture did not wane in Europe and Russia, which was manifested not only in the flourishing of the chinoiserie style but also in the collecting of Chinese art works that held both aesthetic and ethnographic value.

In the interiors of the Cabinet-Library and the Kunstkamera, carved cabinets and shelves have been recreated, where the Grand Duke’s book collection was stored, numbering more than 4,000 volumes and covering all sections of military, exact, natural, and humanitarian sciences. A special place in the exhibition is given to unique furniture pieces made to order by Peter Fyodorovich for storing collections of minerals, porcelain, and jewelry.

The eastern wing of the Picture House housed the Opera Hall — the first court theater established by Grand Duke Peter Fyodorovich at the Oranienbaum residence, which existed from 1755 to 1758. For the arrangement of the Opera Hall in the Picture House, the best Italian theater specialists of the time were invited, who decorated performances in the imperial theaters in St. Petersburg: machinist Carlo Gibelli, perspective painters and decorators Giuseppe Valeriani and Antonio Perezinotti. Over four seasons, Italian opera seria, comedies, and cantatas to the music of Francesco Araja, the court kapellmeister of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, were staged.

Currently, in the space of the reconstructed Opera Hall, a multimedia performance dedicated to the history of Russian theater of the Baroque era is presented. The performance uses fragments of musical works by Francesco Araja, including the opera "Cephalus and Procris," recreated in 2001 on the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, as well as sketches of Valeriani’s decorations and theatrical costumes by Bocquet.

Sources:

https://peterhofmuseum.ru/objects/oranienbaum/kartinniy_dom

https://peterburg.center/museum/Музей_Картинный_дом_%28Ломоносов%29-n