Beschrijving

Published to accompany an exhibition of paintings from the Dresden State Art Collections, this catalogue is testament to the Saxon Electors’ passion for collecting works of art of the highest quality.
During the eighteenth century, by inheritance and judicious purchase, Augustus the Strong and his son and successor Augustus III created one of Europe’s premier picture galleries. Besides Italian masterpieces by Mantegna, Titian, Veronese, Tiepolo and Bellotto, the collection comprises a large number of works by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painters, such as Metsu, Rubens and Van Dyck, and outstanding works by Spanish, French and German masters, among them Velazquez, Murillo, Poussin, Watteau, Durer and Cranach.
Having survived the destruction of Dresden during the Second World War, the collection was once more threatened in 2002, as floodwater from the River Elbe rushed through the vaults of Gottfried Semper’s beautiful gallery building. Hundreds of works were swiftly moved from underground storage rooms into the main galleries. Fortunately all the paintings survived, and many of them are included here, each accompanied by a scholarly catalogue entry. An informative introduction by the Director of the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Harald Marx, sets the paintings in context and describes the growth of the collection.