Old French Painting 16-18 th centuries

The department reperesenting old French painting, including some 100 pictures from the period preceding the 19th century, is comparable in its scale to the Spanish collection, but more uneven from a historical point of view. Alongside the modest representatives of court portaiture, two wing-panels of outstanding quality dating from around 1520 draw a picture of Burgundian Renaissance painting. Although the distribution of the 17th and 18th century items is balanced, the significance of the examples are unequal. Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Chardin are absent from the collection, the 17th century is demonstarted by a comprehensive collection, representing the most influental masters and artistic trends of the period. The arrangement of the works basically follows a chronological order through the volume, but this chronology might be broken at times, giving preference to stylistic relations between the pictures.