History of the Dresden Gallery Automatic translate

There are many interesting and ancient museums in Europe, one of the oldest is the famous art gallery in Dresden (Germany). Its opening took place in 1855 and at that time in the collection there were a little more than two thousand canvases. Over the years, the museum has been replenished with new exhibits, their number has grown so much that in 1931 there was a need to divide them into categories. Since then, the Dresden Gallery has kept the work of masters of the XIII-XVIII centuries. Today the gallery has collected a huge number of unique exhibits, these are the most famous and very valuable canvases of the Dutch and Italian masters.

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The first canvases for the future gallery were collected during the reign (1486-1525) of King Frederick III. The monarch personally dealt with the issue of replenishing the exposition with old paintings and the works of his talented contemporaries - Cranach and Dürer. The Kunstkamera owes its appearance to the Elector himself Augustus I, who contributed to her education and collection of exhibits for her collection. It also included coins, jewelry and utensils, and as regards painting, we can say that it is difficult to call various paintings. Their plots were of a monarchical and religious orientation. The namesake of Augustus I is another Elector of Augustus II, during the years of his life he also became famous as the patron of the Golden Age.

Once he visited other European countries and decided to enrich the museum with new exhibits - he acquired such masterpieces as The Kingdom of the Flora (Poussin) and Sleeping Venus (Giorgione). We must also pay tribute to Augustus III, who continued this glorious tradition of replenishing the Dresden collection with valuable exhibits. True, he went much further in his zeal, hiring specialists to search for real masterpieces of art at all auctions in Europe. The most striking and valuable acquisition of that time was the collection owned by the Duke of d’Este. It included such beautiful canvases as “The Madonna and the Family” by Cuccino, the “Caesar’s Dinar” by Titian and other, no less unique works of other masters of painting. The number of paintings in this collection was about a hundred paintings.

In addition to buying a work of art, Augustus III often ordered paintings by famous artists or bought ready-made works from them. Among them were Belotto, Rotary and other brush masters. At the same time, the search for paintings by Tiepolo, Rubens and Piazzetti continued in all European countries. The gallery in Dresden became a painting by Rembrandt "Self-portrait with Saskia", a painting by Lothar "Chocolate Girl". The highlight of all the acquisitions at that time was the famous painting, painted by Raphael with the title “Sistine Madonna”. She crowned the entire collection of paintings acquired during the reign of Augustus III. The gallery stores about fifteen paintings by Rembrandt, about thirty-five belong to Belotto’s craftsmanship, ten paintings were painted by Van Dyck, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Jacob Van Reisdahl and other famous artists.

For the art gallery in 1722 a palace was built - a large complex, known as the Zwinger complex. It was a time when the Saxon monarchy was at the peak of its power and prosperity. Later, already in the 19th century, a separate building was erected for the museum, which became part of the complex. Its construction was carried out by a specially invited specialist and architect of the time - Gottfried Zempler. According to his design, all the buildings were to be built in the Neo-Renaissance style, including the building of the theater and museum. In collaboration with sculptures by Hanel and Richelle, Zempler in 1846 creates a project for the construction of the gallery, which ideally should fit into the style of the entire complex already rebuilt. She was supposed to organically complement the Zwinger.

Work on this project continued until the start of the revolution (1849), so at the time of Zempler’s departure from Dresden, only the basement of the future gallery was ready. The builders were able to complete the construction of the gallery, the famous architect Kruger led this process. As a result, the building was erected on three floors, on its both sides peculiar wings were located. The main floor was the second floor. During the period when Hitler’s army was in charge of Europe, museum premises underwent some destruction. Some of the canvases were hidden in the shelter, and some were taken to Russia (these canvases were almost not damaged).

In the post-war period, the best restorers of the whole world worked on the restoration of great canvases. It took almost twenty years to restore the world’s masterpieces; a huge amount of money and forces of restorers was spent. Currently, the gallery stores such rarities of art that are significant for humanity, such as paintings of the Dresden treasury.

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