Old Master Paintings

From our largest collection, the collection of Italian pictures, currently the Late Middle Ages, hallmarked by the works of Giotto and Duccio, as well as the Tuscan Early Renaissance, including the masterworks of Verrocchio and Ghirlandaio, are on view. The Baroque Hall on the ground floor presents the secular art of the 17th century, evoking the original environment of the artworks, aristocratic palace interiors.

The early period of Netherlandish painting, of the 15th – 16th century, with the artworks of Gerard David, Hans Memling and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and the grand-scale Baroque painting hallmarked with the names of the Catholic Flandria Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaens, may be studied in the first floor halls. The more bourgeois painting of the other successor state of the country divided into two parts, Protestant Holland, with its masterpieces of Frans Hals, Rembrandt and his circle, Jan Steen and Ruisdael, may be viewed in the one and a half floors of halls of smaller dimension, with their character befitting their home.

The greatest masters of the exhibition of the Spanish collection, El Greco, Velázquez, Murillo and Goya, through their emblematic artworks, provide an almost complete glimpse into the art of the region.

The German and Austrian collection is likewise generous, its exhibition spanning from Mediaeval altarpieces, among them the work of Hans Holbein the Elder, across the great masters of the Renaissance, Dürer and Cranach, up to the 17th – 18th century masters, Kupezky and Maulbertsch.

A smaller, but distinguished selection represents British painting, including among others, the compositions of Lely, Reynolds and Constable.

Image: Protectors of the Young Artist, Adriaen van Stalbemt, oil on oak, 17th century