About the Paintings Gallery

Masterpieces of European painting

The Paintings Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna is one of Austria’s most important collections of Old Masters, spanning works from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. A selection of around 180 masterpieces is displayed alternately in the exhibition format Considering the Collection, which features different thematic focuses and contemporary Inserts as well as in themed exhibitions.

The Paintings Gallery owes its most famous works to the endowment made to the Vienna Academy in 1822 by Count Anton Lamberg-Sprinzenstein, who had served the Habsburgs as a diplomat in Turin and Naples. His distinguished and internationally well-known collection con­sisted of around eight hundred paintings. These works formed the core of the collection, which following further legacies and acqui­sitions has now grown to a total of around 1,200 items.

The Flemish, Dutch and Italian traditions are well represented with outstanding works by Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Ruis­dael, Titian, Guardi and Tiepolo. Likewise the early German and Netherlandish schools, notably with works by Cranach and Bouts and as a real crowd-puller, Hieronymus Bosch’s Last Judgement Triptych.

The group of Italian panel paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which owes its existence to the patronage of Prince Johann II von Liechtenstein, is unparalleled in Austrian museums and galleries. The group includes gold-ground paintings such as Antonio da Fabriano’s Coronation of the Virgin, a number of monumental altarpieces, and Botticelli’s tondo of the Madonna.

Sandro Botticelli, Madonna with Child and two Angels, c. 1490 © Paintings Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

On account of the close historical link between the collections and the Academy, Austria’s leading art school, the Paintings Gal­lery has a further special field, namely, Austrian painting of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Amongst the works that are eloquent testimonies to the rich history of the Vienna Academy are not only numerous portraits of prominent figures such as the iconic image of Maria Theresa as Queen of Hungary but also works submitted by candidates for admission to the Academy and prize-winning works from its competitions. The history paintings of Heinrich Friedrich Füger document the pioneering role played by the painter in laying the ground for Neoclassicism in Vienna around 1800.

The collection of the Paintings Gallery thus offers a broad cross-section of European painting from the fifteenth to the nine­teenth century. With paintings by prominent Austrian artists such as Herbert Boeckl, Albert Paris Gütersloh, Brigitta Malche, Max Weiler and Markus Prachensky, the collection continues through the twentieth century to the present day. At any one time, selected works from the permanent collections are always on display in the current temporary exhibition.

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