Galerie des maîtres anciens

For more than two centuries visitors have come to Dresden partly for a single painting. Raphael's Sistine Madonna, bought by the Saxon elector Augustus III in 1754, shows the Virgin stepping forward through parted green curtains, and at the very bottom two small winged boys lean on a ledge, chins in hands, looking bored. Those two cherubs have been printed on more mugs, cards and posters than almost any detail in art, and most people meet them without knowing where they come from.

The gallery holds the picture collection the Saxon rulers built in the 17th and 18th centuries, when Dresden was one of Europe's richest courts. It fills the Semper Gallery, the Renaissance-revival wing the architect Gottfried Semper added to the Zwinger, the ornate festival palace beside the river. Beside the Raphael hang Giorgione's Sleeping Venus, works by Correggio and Titian, and a deep run of Dutch painting.

One small Vermeer here has changed in living memory. His Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window had, for generations, a bare wall behind her, until restorers found that a large figure of Cupid had been painted out after Vermeer's death. They removed the later overpaint, and since 2021 the god of love stands revealed above her shoulder. The whole collection came through a harder disappearance, hidden during the Second World War, then taken to the Soviet Union, and returned to Dresden in 1955.