 Gemäldegalerie, Berlin | |
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| Location | Berlin,Germany |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 52°30′31″N13°21′53″E / 52.50861°N 13.36472°E /52.50861; 13.36472 |
TheGemäldegalerie (German pronunciation:[ɡəˈmɛːldəɡaləˌʁiː],Painting Gallery) is an art museum inBerlin, Germany, and the museum where the main selection of paintings belonging to theBerlin State Museums (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) is displayed. It was first opened in 1830, and the current building was completed in 1998. It is located in theKulturforum museum district west ofPotsdamer Platz.
It holds one of the world's leading collections of European paintings from the 13th to the 18th centuries. Its collection includes masterpieces from such artists asAlbrecht Dürer,Lucas Cranach,Hans Holbein,Rogier van der Weyden,Jan van Eyck,Raphael,Botticelli,Titian,Caravaggio,Peter Paul Rubens,David Teniers the Younger,Rembrandt,Frans Hals,Johannes Vermeer,Thomas Gainsborough,Joshua Reynolds andAntonio Viviani.
Unlike most major national European collections (with the exception of theNational Gallery, London), theGemäldegalerie collection is not essentially formed around the former dynastic royal collection, but created by a process of acquisition by thePrussian government beginning in 1815. From the first the museum was intended to reflect the full range of European art, giving a different emphasis from that of older royal collections, including the royal collection of Saxony, now mostly in theGemäldegalerie Alte Meister inDresden, the finest German princely collection, which like other royal collections is strongest in Italian art.[1]
The collection is arranged more or less chronologically starting from the entrance and moving toward the farthest room; however there are many doors back to the long central space, so it is straightforward to reach any other room at any point. The visitor chooses between southern, mainly Italian, art to the left, and German and Flemish art to the right. Completing the circuit takes the visitor first forward, then backward, in time. The numbering system starting on the north side of the museum covers mostly Northern European art, then British art. A visitor following along the southern side will go through mostly Italian and Southern European art. The main floor galleries contain some 850 works in 53 rooms, with around 400 more in several rooms off a corridor downstairs, which are also open to visitors.[2]
TheGemäldegalerie 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. The German collection is the finest and most comprehensive in the world, rivaled only by Vienna and Munich, and the Early Netherlandish and Italian collections are also exceptionally comprehensive. The holdings of Spanish, French, and British art are much smaller. Especially notable rooms include the octagonal Rembrandt room and a room containing five differentMadonnas byRaphael.
There are two paintings byVermeer in the collection,The Wine Glass andWoman with a Pearl Necklace.
Other notable experiences includeFlemish 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 theRenaissance section, for example,Caravaggio'sAmor Victorious is displayed alongsideGiovanni Baglione'sSacred Love Versus Profane Love. The two paintings are historically connected; after hearing of the scandalous portrayal of the theme "love conquers all" in Caravaggio's work, a Roman bishop commissioned Baglione's reply, which mimics Carvaggio's style, including the features ofAmor.
The current gallery sits in the southwest corner of the Kulturforum, a modern-styled answer to the old Museumsinsel (Museum Island). The gallery was designed byMunicharchitectsHeinz Hilmer andChristoph Sattler. The building consists of 72 rooms providing a two-kilometer (1.25 mi) floor. Upstairs the rooms flow around a large central hall, described by the museum as a "meditation hall". The hall sometimes displays sculpture, but is mostly empty, allowing easy crossing between rooms, and somewhere for school parties to sit.[3] There are also works downstairs, a gallery devoted to frames, and a digital gallery.
In 2012, the gallery's collection faced a pending move to a temporary site on Berlin's Museumsinsel, to make room for the expansion of theNeue Nationalgalerie and the 20th-century collection of Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch, bequeathed on condition that it be displayed in its entirety. The proposal has provoked controversy and criticism, particularly since there are no permanent plans for a new structure that would house the collection in its full scope.[4][5][6][7]
The plan to move the collection was later scrapped following the public backlash and financial considerations regarding the new buildings. The paintings will remain in their current location.[8]
The collection was first opened to the public in 1830, on completion of construction of the Royal Museum, now called theAltes Museum ("Old Museum"), designed byKarl Friedrich Schinkel and sited by theLustgarten opposite theRoyal Palace on the other side ofUnter den Linden. The paintings occupied the upper floor with thecollection of antiquities on the lower. At this point, the collection contained nearly 1200 paintings, with a core of 160 from the 17th-century collection of MarcheseVincenzo Giustiniani, bought in Paris in 1815. An even more important purchase was 677 paintings from the collection formed in Berlin by the English merchantEdward Solly, which were acquired in 1821; Solly was an early collector of ItalianTrecento andQuattrocento paintings andEarly Netherlandish painting.[9]
Purchases continued throughout the 19th century, with 345 works acquired during the inaugural directorship ofGustav Friedrich Waagen from 1830 to 1868, though paintings competed with antiquities for rather reduced purchasing budgets.[10]
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After Berlin became the capital of the newGerman Empire in 1871 the funds available greatly increased, and purchases accelerated, as Berlin strove to catch up with the greatest European collections. In 1874 the collection acquired the best of the collection of mostly north European art formed by the industrialistBarthold Suermondt ofAachen after his business collapsed. This was handled for the museum by the art historianWilhelm von Bode, who had joined in 1872, and was to be the Berlin Museums' greatest Director. He headed the sculpture collections from 1883, then the paintings from 1890, becoming general head of the Berlin Museums from 1890 to 1920. A specialist inRembrandt and Dutch painting, he made very significant additions in those areas but did not neglect Italian painting. His leadership marked the rise of theGemäldegalerie to international prominence.[11]
In 1904 theGemäldegalerie moved to the newly builtKaiser Friedrich Museum, now theBode Museum, where the collection continued to expand. The museum was badly damaged duringWorld War II, but most of the collection survived the war in shelters across Germany. At the end of the war, however, 400 works that were regarded as too large to take to the remoter hiding places were destroyed in a fire in aFlak tower that served as a bomb shelter. Many important altarpieces and other large works were lost, and the collection remains short of very large works compared to the other major European collections. Furthermore, several hundred paintings were looted by Russian or American soldiers or confiscated by the Red Army and never returned,[12] although in June 2006 a small painting byAlessandro Allori, missing since 1944, was returned by the British journalistCharles Wheeler, who had been given it at the end of the war in Berlin.[13] The surviving collection was divided between East Berlin (mostly at the Bode Museum on Museumsinsel) and West Berlin inBerlin-Dahlem, where from the 1950s they were housed in a building originally used for the Asiatic collections, built in 1923, with post-war additions.[14]
Purchases for the West Berlin collection eventually resumed after the war, withDutch Golden Age painting, ItalianBaroque painting, and the creation of a small section forEnglish painting being priorities for successive directors before theRe-unification of Germany. In 1992 the museum administrations of East and West were re-united, but uniting the collections physically took longer. The current building on the Kulturforum was completed in 1998, and displays some 1,250 paintings, although yet another move currently seems likely (see below). Other works are displayed elsewhere, as the museum forms part of the Berlin State Museums and does not own a distinct collection as most museums do. For example,L'Enseigne de Gersaint, or "Gersaint's Shopsign", (1720), a famous painting byJean-Antoine Watteau, is displayed with other works in the appropriate setting ofCharlottenburg Palace. The whole collection ofOld Master Western paintings in the Berlin State Museums is usually said to be around 3,000.[15]
In 1999 theGemäldegalerie restituted to the heirs of the Jewish art collectorFederico Gentili di Giuseppe a painting byGiovanni Battista Tiepolo, entitledRinaldo Abandoning Armida. Gentili di Giuseppe's art collection had been plundered by Nazis and disposed of via a series of Paris sales in 1942; theGemäldegalerie had acquired it from the French art dealer Cailleux, in 1979.[16]
In 2019, Berlin'sGemäldegalerie (Old Master Gallery) returned two late medieval panels to the heirs of a famous Jewish art collectorHarry Fuld Senior who had been looted by Nazis. In 1940 the panels by the Italian artist Giovanni di Paolo,The Clothing of St. Clare By St. Francis, andSt. Clare Rescuing the Shipwrecked, (c 1455), were acquired via the art dealer Carl Bümming by what was then called the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum.[17]
In 2020 Berlin'sGemäldegalerie restituted a 16th-century painting byHans Baldung Grien to the heirs ofHans Purrmann was forced to sell the work from his collection after losing his livelihood due to Nazi persecution.[18]
West Berlin:
East Berlin:
After Reunion, 1990
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Germany has returned two late medieval panels to the heirs of a famous Jewish art collector. The religious paintings, which were in Berlin'sGemäldegalerie (Old Master Gallery), originally formed part of the remarkable art collection of the Jewish businessman Harry Fuld Senior. They are the latest pieces of Nazi-looted art to have been successfully recovered by his heirs, although hundreds of items remain missing. The panels by the Italian artist Giovanni di Paolo depict two scenes of the life of St. Clare of Assisi. The Clothing of St. Clare By St. Francis, and St. Clare Rescuing the Shipwrecked. Both date from around 1455.
Berlin'sGemäldegalerie has restituted a 16th-century painting by Hans Baldung Grien to the heirs of Hans Purrmann, a friend of Henri Matisse who was persecuted by the Nazis as a "degenerate" artist and was forced to sell the work from his collection after losing his livelihood.
