Permanent exhibition of the Main Building of the Museum of Fine Arts

About exhibition

The permanent exhibition of the Museum's Main Building presents foreign art from various countries and periods, from the earliest times to the early 19th century. It is an extensive collection of tinted gypsum casts of works from antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as a collection of original paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and decorative and applied arts. Particular attention is drawn to monuments of Ancient Egypt, the treasures discovered by Heinrich Schliemann during the excavations of Troy, and works by outstanding European artists of the Renaissance and the Early Modern period — Sandro Botticelli, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, El Greco, Nicolas Poussin, and Antoine Watteau. The Main Building of the museum was constructed at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries to a design by architect Roman Klein. Museum interiors play an important role in immersing visitors in a given historical era — the architectural decoration of the halls corresponds to the exhibits displayed in them.