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Museo del Prado

The Museo del Prado is a museum and art gallery located in Madrid, the capital of Spain. It features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture, it also contains important collections of other types of works. A new, recently opened wing enlarged the display area by about 400 paintings, and it is currently used mainly for temporary expositions. El Prado is one of the most visited sites in the world, and it is considered to be among the greatest museums of art. The principal attraction takes root in the wide presence of Velázquez, Francisco de Goya (the artist more extensively represented in the collection), Titian, Rubens and Bosch, of that it possesses the best collections that exist on a global scale

The collection currently comprises around 7,600 paintings, 1,000 sculptures, 4,800 prints and 8,200 drawings, in addition to a large number of works of art and historic documents. By 2012 the Museum will be displaying about 1300 works in the main buildings, while around 3,100 works are on temporary loan to various museums and official institutions. The remainder are in storage.^[2]

The best known work on display at the museum is Las Meninas by Velázquez. Velázquez not only provided the Prado with his own works, but his keen eye and sensibility was also responsible for bringing much of the museum's fine collection of Italian masters to Spain.

Pablo Picasso's renowned work Guernica was exhibited in the Prado upon its return to Spain after the restoration of democracy, but was moved to the Museo Reina Sofía in 1992 as part of a transfer of all works later than the early 19th century to other buildings for space reasons.

National Gallery

The National Gallery in London was founded in 1824 and houses a rich collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900^[a] in its home on Trafalgar Square. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.^[2] Its collection belongs to the public of the United Kingdom and entry to the main collection (though not some special exhibitions) is free of charge.

Unlike comparable art museums such as the Louvre in Paris or the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of the insurance broker and patron of the arts John Julius Angerstein in 1824. After that initial purchase the Gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, notably Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which comprise two thirds of the collection.^[3] The resulting collection is small in size, compared with many European national galleries, but encyclopaedic in scope; most major developments in Western painting "from Giotto to Cézanne"^[4] are represented with important works. It used to be claimed that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on permanent exhibition,^[5] but this is no longer the case.

The present building, the third to house the National Gallery, was designed by William Wilkins from 1832–8. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, as the building has been expanded piecemeal throughout its history. The building often came under fire for its perceived aesthetic deficiencies and lack of space; the latter problem led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897. The Sainsbury Wing, an extension to the west by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, is a notable example of Postmodernist architecture in Britain. The current Director of the National Gallery is Nicholas Penny.

Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (English: Old Masters Picture Gallery) in Dresden (Germany) features major works of art. It is part of Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (English: Dresden State Art Collections) beside ten further museums (e.g. Grünes Gewölbe, Kupferstich-Kabinett and Rüstkammer), owned by the State of Saxony.

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Art collection

Its works originate from the 15th to the 18th century. Among the primary focuses of its holdings are Italian painting of the Renaissance and Baroque as well as Dutch and Flemish painting originated mainly from the 17th century. The gallery has art works of famous German, French and Spanish painters.

panels and canvases of the early Renaissance are shown – for example the recently restored Saint Sebastian of Antonello da Messina.

Italian artwork is exhibited in rooms with deep red colored walls in comparison to Dutch and Flemish paintings which are shown in green surroundings.

In 2008 around 536,000 people visited the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

Zadiranova Olga MDG

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