Initially the paintings decorated the palace of the Saxon electors, then one of the rooms of the Zwinger was adapted for the exposition, and in the middle of the 19th century a separate two-story building with suits of rooms in which masterpieces can be viewed to this day was built for the gallery. The main treasures of the Dresden Gallery are the paintings of the Renaissance masters. Works by Dutch artists Rembrandt van Rijn and Jacob van Rijsdal, German painters Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein and Lucas Cranach are on display here. Paintings by artists from other European countries are represented by canvases by El Greco, Velázquez and many other masters. Besides paintings, the gallery offers ancient woven tapestries, pastels and miniatures.
The gallery in Dresden is on the prestigious list of the most famous art museums on the planet. In the ranking of museums in Germany it ranks second only to the Berlin collections. Over half a million art lovers come to the Old Masters Gallery in Dresden each year.
History of the art gallery
Collecting works of art was the passion of the powerful Saxon ruler Augustus II the Strong, who also held the titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. This monarch ruled at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was during this period that the core of his art collection formed the basis of the modern Dresden Picture Gallery. The hereditary prince who eventually took his father’s throne under the name of Augustus III enlarged the collection with new acquisitions of paintings by renowned painters.
In 1746 Augustus III bought around a hundred paintings from Italy, which adorned the palace of Francesco III D’Este, Duke of Modena and Reggio. Among them were rare canvases by Renaissance artists, works by Baroque and Classicist masters. But the most fortunate acquisition of the Elector of Saxony was Raphael Santi’s painting The Sistine Madonna, painted in the early 16th century and kept in a monastery in Italy.
The art collection of the Saxon elector, which was considerably enriched under this patron of the arts, gained European fame. But the priceless paintings which filled the interiors of the royal palace were not available to the general public. It was time to place these treasures in a special gallery. It was decided to build it in the palace complex Zwinger. The building was designed by the famous German architect Gottfried Semper. In spite of the fact that the facades of the gallery were made in the Neo-Renaissance style, the building blended harmoniously into the Baroque stylistics of the architectural complex.
The building was completed in 1855. Now everyone could see the artistic treasures. The first visitors were the Dresden burghers who brought their families to see the pictures. There is evidence that the only stipulation for tourists in the mid-19th century was a dress code: visitors were required to come to the gallery in “decent clothes”. But we should not think that for ordinary European townspeople the paintings of famous artists were a curiosity. Many painters drew the subjects of their works in the domestic environment and carried out orders not only rich aristocrats, but also wealthy merchants and artisans. For example, the paintings of the so-called “Little Dutchmen” exhibited in the Dresden Gallery, who painted small canvases, once decorated the living rooms of weavers or carpenters. One of his paintings was once hung in the house of an Amsterdam baker.
The German National Socialists who came to power in Germany in 1933, led by Adolf Hitler, infected the country with the ideology of Nazism. Some of the paintings in the Dresden gallery were declared “degenerate and ideologically harmful”, and soon these works were destroyed. Many paintings that the Nazi leaders liked were moved into their luxurious apartments.
The gallery building was catastrophically damaged during the Second World War. In April 1945 it was bombed by Allied planes. Most of the paintings had been removed and hidden beforehand, but the remaining canvases, mostly large format, were destroyed by fire. When Dresden was cleared of Wehrmacht troops by the Soviet army, the hidden paintings were discovered in nearby mines. Among them was Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, badly damaged by humidity. The finds were taken to restoration workshops in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. In June 1956, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev returned the salvaged works of art to Dresden.
The restoration of the Dresden Gallery building was completed in 1960, but extensive restoration work was also carried out in the following years. Following the regular renovation a few years ago, the interior design of the rooms was radically changed. The exterior luxury of the Royal Zwinger remains beyond the threshold of the gallery. The interiors are decorated in an emphatically restrained manner, nothing here distracts from contemplation of the canvases hanging on the monochrome walls.