Hajós György: Heroes' Square - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

Six departments (the Egyptian Collection, the Ancient Collection, the Old Masters’ Picture Collection, the Old Sculpture Department, the Graphic Arts Department and the Modern Department) are in charge of maintaining the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts. The 2,800 paintings in the care of the Old Masters’ Picture Gallery constitute the museum’s most important collection, including as it does works by Raphael, Correggio, Giorgione, Tiziano, Veronese, Tintoretto, Petrus Christus, Pieter Brueghel Sr. and Jr., Rembrandt, Van Dyck, El Greco, Goya, Velázquez, Holbein, Dürer, Lucas Chranach Sr. and Gainsborough. The collection of the Old Sculpture Department contains some 330 works illustrating the evolution of European sculpture from the time of ancient Christianity to the end of the Baroque period. Of these the most valuable are pieces by Andrea Pisano, Verrocchio, Raphael Donner and anonymous French, Flemish, German and Italian masters of the mediaeval period, as well as a small equestrian statue by Leonardo da Vinci. With its ten thousand or so drawings and almost a hundred thousand duplicated pieces the Graphic Arts Department gives an entire cross-section of the European schools (works by Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer, Watteau, Rembrandt, Corot, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso are the most treasured items in this collection). The collection of the Modern Department provides a sequel to that of the Old Masters’ Picture Gallery, introducing the visitor to the painting, sculpture and numismatic art of the 19th and 20,h centuries through works by Amerling, Kokoschka, Segantini, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Gauguin, Cézanne, Chagall, Rodin and other outstanding artists.

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