| Description |  |
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The Gemäldegalerie possesses one of the world's finest collections of European art from the 13th to 18th century. After the collection was founded in 1830, it was systematically built up and perfected. The exhibition includes masterpieces by artists from every age of art history such as van Eyck, Bruegel, Dürer, Raphael, Tizian, Caravaggio, Rubens, Vermeer and Rembrandt.
The collection
This newly built museum is situated at the Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz. It has about 7,000 square metres of exhibition space. The modern-styled building answer to East Berlin's Museumsinsel (Museum Island) which was inaccessible to West Berliners when the city was divided by the Berlin Wall from 1961 through 1989. The gallery was designed by Munich architects Heinz Hilmer and Christoph Sattler. The building consists of 72 rooms providing a two-kilometer floor. Upstairs the rooms flow around a center hall the size of a football (soccer) field. The hall sometimes displays sculpture. There are also works downstairs, a gallery devoted to frames, and a digital gallery.
A complete tour of the 72 rooms covers almost two kilometres. Two of the major sections are formed by Italian painting from the 13th to 16th century and Netherlandish painting of the 15th and 16th century.
Old German painting of the Late Gothic and Renaissance eras is represented by such great masters as Konrad Witz, Albrecht Dürer, Baldung Grien, Cranach and Holbein.
The octagonal Rembrandt room enjoys a key position at the heart of the museum. The sixteen works by this artist form one of the largest and highest quality collections of Rembrandt paintings. They are flanked by additional gems of Dutch and Flemish painting of the 17th century. Portraits, genre paintings, interiors, landscapes and still-lifes illustrate certain artists' preferences for particular types of themes.
Italian, French, German and English painting of the 18th century is presented in six rooms. This splendid collection of paintings includes works by Canaletto, Watteau, Pesne and Gainsborough.
The main gallery contains one thousand masterpieces. These paintings are complemented by four hundred works in a study gallery on the lower floor.
The Gemäldegalerie prides itself on its scientific methodology in collecting and displaying art. Each room can be taken in as a single statement about one to five artists in a certain period or following a certain style. Especially notable rooms include the octagonal Rembrandt room and a room containing five different Madonnas by Raphael.
Other notable experiences include Flemish moralistic paintings which stretch across the north side of the museum, showing an interplay between the religious motives of the artists' patrons and the often sensual inspirations of the artists. In the Renaissance section, for example, Caravaggio's Amor Victorious is displayed alongside Giovanni Baglione's Sacred Love Versus Profane Love. The two paintings are historically connected; after hearing of the scandalous portrayal of the theme "love conquers all" in Carvaggio's work, a Roman bishop commissioned Baglionne's reply, which mimics Carvaggio's style, including the features of Amor.
The collection is more or less chronological starting from the entrance and moving toward the farthest wall. Following the rooms as they are numbered takes the visitor first forward, then backward, in time. The numbering system starting on the north side of the museum yields mostly Northern European art, then British portrait art. A visitor following along the southern side will go through mostly Italian and Southern European art. The gallery contains 1200 works, with around 400 more downstairs. Complementary audio guides in English, French, and German are available.
Visitors also have access to a digital gallery with computerized information in German, English and French. Audio-tours are also available in German and English. |
| Histoire | |
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The collection was first located in the Royal Museum located near Lustgarten on Unter den Linden, a famous Berlin street. The collection began largely with the collection of Frederick the Great. The gallery's first director was Gustav Friedrich Waagen.
Berlin's premier name in museum direction, Wilhelm von Bode, served the gallery from 1890 to 1929. His leadership marked the rise of the Gemäldegalerie to international prominence.
In 1904 the Gemäldegalerie was largely a collection of Renaissance art when it moved to the newly built Kaiser Friedrich Museum, later known as the Bode Museum.
The museum was badly damaged during World War II, however most of the collection survived the war in shelters across Germany. At the end of world war II however, 400 art pieces were destroyed in a fire of a Flak tower that served as bomb shelter. Furthermore, several hundred paintings looted by Russian as well as American soldiers or confiscated and never returned by the red army. The rest of the collection was divided between East Berlin (mostly at the Bode Museum on Museumsinsel) and West Berlin in Berlin-Dahlem. |
