Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
▲
Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie der Bildenden Künste)
This museum—in a grand Neo-Renaissance building—features a small but impressive col-
lection of works by Bosch, Botticelli, Guardi, Rubens, Van Dyck, and other great masters.
It's housed upstairs in a working art academy, giving it a certain sense of realness.
Cost and Hours:
€8 includes permanent collection and special exhibits, audioguide-
€2; Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, closed Mon, 3 blocks from the Opera at Schillerplatz 3, tel. 01/
588-162-222,
www.akademiegalerie.at
.
Self-Guided Tour:
Head into the academy building and go up two floors to the mu-
seum (follow signs for
Gemäldegalerie
). Upon entering, the contemporary art collection is
on your right and the painting gallery
(Gemäldegalerie)
is on your left. Between them are
statues celebrating the body, whose exposed musculature is a reminder that to realistically
portray the human form you must first study it.
Walk into the painting gallery, which (confusingly) runs in reverse chronological order.
Bear left into the first, smaller room, dedicated to the Academy of Fine Arts itself. At the
end of this room is a portrait of the school's founder, Empress Maria Theresa. This portrait,
from 1750, is considered one of the best. It's by the Swedish painter Martin Meytens, whose
self-portrait looks onapprovingly from the right. Also nearby you'll see (pictured in the fine
gold frame) one of the major donors of the collection, and early professors painting, draw-
ing, and sculpting a nude model.
Go through the door to the right of Maria Theresa, and work your way counterclockwise
through the exhibit. The section of 18th-century Italian works includes a Venice series by
Francesco Guardi.
In the long hall are typically Dutch and Flemish 17th-century still lifes
and landscapes, as well as one
Rembrandt
(Portrait of a Young Woman,
c. 1632). A group
of paintings by
Peter Paul Rubens
includes his typical fleshy nudes, as well as quick,
sketchy cartoons used to create giant canvases that once decorated a Jesuit church in Ant-
werp, Belgium (it later burned down, leaving only these rough plans). Don't miss his volup-
tuous
Three Graces
. Nearby, in an oversized frame, Rubens' talented protégé,
Anthony van
Dyck,
shows his prowess in a famous self-portrait painted at the age of 15.
TheItalianandSpanishRenaissancearewell-representedbythelikesofTitianandMur-
illo. At the end of the hall is one of the museum's prize pieces, a round
Botticelli
canvas
(recentlycleanedtoshowoffitsvividcolors)depictingtheMadonnatenderlyembracingthe
Baby Jesus while angels look on.
At the end of the hall is the collection's grand finale, the captivating, harrowing
Last
Judgment
triptych by
Hieronymus Bosch
(c. 1482, with some details added by Lucas
Cranach). This is the polar opposite of Bosch's other most famous work,
The Garden of
Earthly Delights
(in Madrid's El Prado). Read the altarpiece from left to right, following the
pessimisticallymedievalnarrativeabouthumankind'sfallfromGod'sgraces:Intheleftpan-
