The famous Dresden Gallery and its collection

Not every European city has had such a glorious and tragic fate as the German Dresden experienced. This unique city was inspired by Florence on the Elbe, and not only because of its magnificent geographical position in the valley of the Elbe River and the magnificent architecture in the Baroque style. The air itself is imbued with the spirit of art that hovers in the city's art museums. One of them is the Dresden Gallery, which is famous all over the world, the official name of which is the "Old Masters Gallery".

Pride of Germany

The picture gallery, which houses the best examples of ancient European painting, is located in a three-story building with a dome. It is part of the residence of the Saxon imperial princes (electors) Zwinger and is part of the architectural ensemble that unites this palace and the theater square of Dresden.

You can preview the history and the collection that the Dresden Gallery is so famous for: the museum's site kindly provides the necessary information in German and English. Those wishing to visit the museum can get here on any day of the week, except Monday (closed). Children are admitted to the exhibition for free.

History of exposition

The Dresden Gallery began from the cabinet of rarities - the kunstkamera, which collected various curiosities from the world of nature and human inventions. Along with rare specimens, the yard collected paintings by famous masters. The then-ruled Frederick the Wise ordered the works of Durer and Cranach. The works of these artists decorated the walls of the palace, and today are the pearls of the exhibition, which is famous for the Dresden Picture Gallery. Not a single generation of Saxon Electors bought canvases, engravings, coins, porcelain, but the museum really waited until Augustus the Strong. For several decades the collection was so enlarged that the castle could not accommodate all the exhibits. The gallery was transferred to a specially restored building of the royal stables.

The heyday of the princely collection

The descendant of the Elector August III finished his father's work, turning the court collection into the greatest repository of painting, which was the golden fund of world art. August purposefully and persistently collected the best examples of European painting, not stinting on the means. He organized an entire network, whose staff visited all sales and auctions in Europe, agreed on the acquisition of individual paintings, as well as entire collections. In 1741 the Dresden Gallery was replenished with a large collection of paintings bought from the Duke of Wallenstein. A few years later, there was a collection of Francesco III d'Este with the masterpieces of Velasquez, Correggio, Titian. In 1754, from the monastery of St. Sixtus in Piacenza in Dresden was brought and the great "Sistine Madonna" Raphael (the picture was bought for twenty thousand sequins). Almost all of the work of Rembrandt was acquired at that time by the Dresden Picture Gallery. The paintings reflected the tastes and artistic preferences of the aristocracy, among them there were many portraits and paintings of religious themes.

After the Seven Years War

In 1756, a devastating seven-year war broke out, and the gathering activity was interrupted for a hundred years. In 1845, the city authorities decided to build a special building for the museum and invited for this purpose the architect Gottfried Semper, who proposed a project that harmoniously blends and complements the medieval Zwinger. The Dresden Gallery was opened in 1855, at that time it contained more than two thousand paintings. The collection was actively replenished with the works of the masters of modern times. However, in the 1930s, the Impressionist paintings and their followers were transported to other museums, and the masterpieces of the ancient masters remained in the Dresden vault.

Difficult destiny of the gallery

At the end of World War II, Dresden was brutally bombed by American and British aircraft. From the incomparable architectural ensemble of Zwinger remained only charred ruins. However, the collection was saved, being hidden in limestone mines. Despite the fact that the tunnels were equipped with ventilation and heating, the system went out of order and the water that came into the shelter damaged the paintings significantly. When the Soviet soldiers found the famous masterpieces, they needed an urgent restoration. The restoration of the great cultural heritage was carried out by the best specialists of the Soviet Union. In 1955, at the insistence of NS. Khrushchev saved works of art were returned to Dresden. The gallery was finally restored by 1964. Today in fifty halls are exhibited about three thousand paintings of recognized geniuses of painting.

Masterpieces

To die in silent ecstasy is forced by ancient canvases, carefully preserved by the famous Dresden Picture Gallery (a photo of some of them are presented in the article). Here is the canvas of the artist of the Early Renaissance Antonello de Messina "Saint Sebastian", in which the Christian martyr is depicted in a stoically monumental perspective, which inspires the idea of conquering the suffering of a feat.

Here is the stunning Raphael Sistine Madonna in a host of angels, before the radiant, divine beauty of which Russian soldiers, who discovered a masterpiece in one of the boxes, silently took off their caps. This is a product of the High Renaissance. Titian's unsurpassed canvas "Caesar's Dinar" with astonishing insight demonstrates an unexpected for worldly understanding of the conflict of moral choice offered by Christ.

A sample of the Later Renaissance - a painting by Parma painter Antonio Correggio "Holy Night" - gently and lyrically tells of the touching worship of the Magi to the newborn Christ. Dutch painting is represented in the Dresden Gallery by the work of Jan van Eyck. The exhibition of the gallery is decorated with unsurpassed Dutch still lifes and landscapes.

On the antithesis of the ever-renewing nature and the imminent finiteness of human life, a picture of Jacob van Ruisdael "The Jewish Cemetery" is being built.

Decorate the exhibition of the gallery and the full movements of the "hunting" paintings of the Flemish painter Rubens, and the genre paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder. France is represented in the Dresden Museum by paintings by Nicholas Poussin. Here the famous "Chocolate Girl" Jean-Etienne Lyotard found the place. The paintings of Murillo and Velasquez represent the Spanish school of painting.