Gemäldegalerie
Matthäikirchplatz
10785 Berlin
S- & U-Bahn Potsdamer Platz
Berlin’s picture gallery is home to a breathtaking collection of Old Master paintings spanning the 13th to the 18th centuries, including works from German, Dutch, Italian and British schools and artists. It is an enormous, overwhelming experience of colour, drama, light and precision on a large scale.
The gallery
forms one important part of the modern Kulturforum complex near Potsdamer Platz,
in the city’s west. Opened in 1998, the building itself is understated and
spare. The external entrance presents a sparse welcome in jagged lines, more
modern in approach than the art contained within.
The Gemäldegalerie’s
internal arrangement focuses on a central atrium, with the gallery rooms
running more or less in two horseshoes – an inner and outer – around it. The
layout in this respect makes it easy to either selectively navigate yourself to
known favourites or periods of interest, or to follow five centuries of
artistic achievement and development chronologically. Doing the latter will
have you walking 2km in order to take in the richness and vastness of the collection.
In roughly
70 parquet-floored rooms, on velvet-covered walls of various hues, hang some of
the big names of the art world past: Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Velázquez,
Rafael, Fra Angelico, Dürer, Jan Van Eyck and more.
Also look
out for Hugo van der Goes’ 15th-century paintings and altarpieces; his sophisticated
use of light embues the corporality of his figures with the semblance of living
flesh; a hand reaches as though it could clutch what it seeks; eyes are
rendered so wonderfully as to gaze piercingly at the viewer.
The large
group of Peter Paul Rubens’ baroque works, of which I wasn’t expecting to be
drawn to, demonstrate both an incredible ability to render the human form and a
mastery of the chiaroscuro technique he learnt from Caravaggio; these are powerful
and moving. A series of Canaletto’s paintings of Venice include two wonderful
night scenes, their incredible detail blanketed in darkness against a midnight
blue sky.
Keep in
mind you’ll need a number of hours to do this gallery justice, and even then
you will have skimmed the surface. Taking a break is a great idea. I walked the
inner horseshoe first, then sought respite in the (rather uninspiring) cafe.
Once rejuvenated by caffeine, I returned to the galleries, beginning this time
in the outer horseshoe. In doing so I covered the chronology from start to
finish again, which gave me both a refreshed view and a deeper appreciation of
what I was experiencing.
