The collection consists of paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture created from the 16th to the beginning of the 19th century. Gothic painting is represented by six panels of a polyptych, The Life of St. Mary, by the Master of the Szaniec Polyptych, and by four altar panels (wings) displaying the scenes of the Passion, dating from approximately 1500.
Among valuable objects documenting the origins of modern painting we should mention: Portrait of the Doge Michele Steno, of the Venetian school of the 1st half of the 15th century, and Portrait of Frederick III the Wise, Elector Palatine by Lucas Cranach the Elder’s circle.
Seventeenth century painting of the northern countries is represented by the following artists: Daniel de Blieck, Jean Battists de Fontenay, Gillis Cleas d’Hondecoeter, Reinier de la Haye, Nicoleas Maes, Claes Cornelius Moeyaert, DirckSantvort, Frans Snyders, Wolfsen Alida’s work, and Antyczny biust w otoku kwiatów (‘An Ancient Bust Rimmed With Flowers’) from Flanders. Among the paintings by masters of Italian Baroque the following deserve to be mentioned: Still Life with Fish by Giuseppe Recco, The Allegory of Autumn Harvest, attributed to Giovanni Battista Ruopolo, and A Man Pondering over a Book, attributed to Giuseppe Nogari. The department holds also a composition by Philippe Peter Roos, aka Rosa da Tivoli, with an idyllic pastoral scene. Central European Baroque gets represented through works by a prominent artist, working in the Czech land in the eighteenth century - Norbert Grund.
Marguerite Virginie Ancelot’s Sappho represents Classicist painting. Augustine Theodul Ribot portraits provide an interesting example of French painting of the 2nd half of the 19th century. The Museum also holds an interesting group of Russian paintings of the 2nd half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, with two paintings by Ilya E. Riepin, Konstantin Korovin and Ivan K. Ayvazovsky.
Works by such artists as Paul Signac, Jacques Emile Blanche, Otto Pippel, Oswald Achenbach, Fernand L’Olivier Allard and Fritz von Uhde exemplify the diverse tendencies in European art of the of the 2nd half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.
The most notable of the prints are: Charles Clement Bervic’s Coronation Portrait of Louis XVI and William Hogarth’s Sleeping Congregation.
A small number of objects illustrates the art of the Far East. A precious example of that art is an enamelled faience figure of the goddess Kannon with a rosary and a dragon. The collection of foreign early art contains in total 1600 objects.
