Treasures of the Collections

A masterpiece of museum architecture, the Gottfried Semper Gallery Building celebrated its reopening in 2020 and houses Dresden’s world-famous Gemälde­galerie Alte Meister and Skulpturen­sammlung until 1800 – a ‘trove of art treasures by the greatest masters that perhaps surpasses all the galleries of the world’. The museum’s impressively choreographed new joint display features wonderous objects from Dresden’s Collection of Classical Antiquities such as the Large Herculaneum Woman, small bronzes and works in marble from the Renaissance and Baroque such as Giambologna’s Mars, and seminal paintings on panel and canvas – from Raphael’s Sistine Madonna to Rembrandt’s portrait of himself and his wife. This lavishly illustrated volume now unites highlights from both collections and is a vivid visual record of the reciprocal streams of influence between the two art forms of painting and sculpture.