Dresden Picture Gallery

one of the largest collections of paintings in the world, part of the State Art Collections in Dresden. Founded in 1560 as the court collection of the electors of Saxony, the gallery was expanded in 1722, and after the construction of a special building (1847-57, chief architect G. Semper), it was opened to the public.

During the bombardment by the British and the Americans in 1945, the building that housed the collection was demolished, and 197 paintings were destroyed. During the last weeks of World War II, the fascist Germans hid the works of art in places unsuitable for storage, where they were threatened by destruction. Many paintings were seriously damaged. The advance of the Soviet Army made it possible to save the treasures of the Dresden Picture Gallery, which were found by Soviet soldiers, taken to the USSR, and restored.

In 1955, 1,240 works of art that had originally belonged to the collection of the Dresden Picture Gallery were returned to the German Democratic Republic, and since 1956 they have been exhibited in the restored building. The Picture Gallery of Old Masters contains universally known paintings by Jan van Eyck, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Correggio, Veronese, Diirer, H. Holbein the Younger, L. Cranach, P. P. Rubens, Rembrandt, J. Vermeer, J. van Ruisdael, Velazquez, J. Ribera, N. Poussin, and A. Watteau. In The Picture Gallery of New Masters the European art schools of the 19th and 20th centuries (particularly the German school) are widely represented, and there are works from the German Democratic Republic and other socialist countries, as well as examples of the contemporary progressive art of bourgeois countries.