Museums of fine arts Budapest. Great museums of the world

In 115 magnificent photographs the masterpieces of painting in the budapest museum of fine arts superbly reproduced in full color.
In these pages, the museum’s director leads us through the surprising range of masterpieces in its collections of paintings, many of which were famous when the museum was first opened as a national collection in 1906, but which are little known to the general public today outside the country because of the interruptions and dislocations of two world wars.
Unlike many of the european galleries originating in the palaces of kings and emperors, the budapest museum is an amalgam of masterpieces reflecting the tastes and enthusiasms of more than two centuries of passionate and dedicated collecting. Its original nucleus and still today its glory is the renowned Esterházy collection. The 636 paintings assembled in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Esterházy princes the wealthiest of the hungarian noble families became one of the sights of Vienna when they were exhibited there in 1814. They include high points of the Italian renaissance in works by Raphael, Crivelli, Tintoretto, Correg gio, J.B. Tiepolo and many others along with perhaps the greatest assemblage of spanish paintings outside the prado, and a remarkable range of the 17thcentury Dutch masters.