PICTURE GALLERY, ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, VIENNA, THE

Several important museums in Europe began their life attached to academies of art. One of the very few that survives encased within an art school is the picture gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. It became the first public museum in Vienna, thanks to a bequest of 740 Old Master paintings, including Bosch, Rubens and Dutch Italianate landscapes, from Count Anton Lamberg in 1822, making it the greatest collection of paintings in Austria after the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Count Lamberg was not the only benefactor of the academy. In 1838, the Emperor Ferdinand gave over eighty Italian paintings, but these had all been looted from Venetian churches and palaces and by the time the academy had finished an expensive restoration programme, it was forced to hand them all back in 1919.