Italian Masterpieces in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin

Italian highlights in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin include a fantastic Renaissance art collection, paintings by Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, and the ever-popular Amor Victorious by Caravaggio.

The Italian collection in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin is outstanding, especially for early Renaissance painting. It ranges from 13th-century panels to Baroque masterpieces, with works by Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, Canaletto, Tiepolo, and Caravaggio. The most popular painting in the museum is Caravaggio’s scandalously erotic Amor Victorious. Buy Gemäldegalerie tickets online for skip-the-line admission to this exceptional art museum.

The Gemäldegalerie’s collection of Italian paintings is of the same high standard as the German and Dutch art. The artworks from the 13th to 16th centuries give an excellent overview of the development of Italian painting from the early Renaissance. Sure, this is not the Uffizi, but it is rare to see such a large collection of top-quality early Renaissance paintings outside Italy.

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Top 10 · Renaissance · Baroque · Botticelli · Raphael · Titian · Caravaggio · Canaletto

Italian Paintings and Other Gemäldegalerie Highlights

The Gemäldegalerie in Berlin is one of Europe’s great Old Masters museums, with outstanding Italian, German, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, French, and English paintings.

Its best-known work is Caravaggio’s Amor Victorious; also known as “Omnia vincit amor” / Amor als Sieger / Amor Triumphant / Love Conquers All, Victorious Cupid, Love Triumphant, Love Victorious, or Earthly Love.

The collection is especially strong in early Italian Renaissance paintings, major works by Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, and Canaletto, early German masters such as Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer, and Netherlandish and Dutch paintings by Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Rembrandt, and Vermeer.

Few visitors can take it all in on a single visit. It is better to choose a few favorite artists, periods, or galleries — and accept that the Gemäldegalerie rewards return visits.

Best Artworks to See in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin

The paintings below are not ranked as a strict top ten. They are described roughly in the order visitors may encounter them.

This route gives a good overview of the Gemäldegalerie’s range, from early Italian Renaissance panels to Baroque masterpieces, the Dutch Golden Age, and some of the finest early German paintings in any museum.

In this instance, start with the Italian Renaissance in Hall XVIII, rather than the early German paintings, and follow the room numbers in reverse order to Hall XII and cabinets 41 to 24.

The Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings in the Gemäldegalerie are of phenomenal quality. Famous artists displayed include Giotto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Canaletto.

→ See also Tips on Visiting the Gemäldegalerie for practical visitor information, including tickets and opening hours.

Italian Renaissance Highlights in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin

All major Italian painters of the Renaissance are represented, amongst others, Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi, Giovanni Bellini, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Andrea Mantegna, Antonello da Messina, Simone Martini, and Andrea del Verrocchio.

A few further standout Italian Renaissance artists with masterpieces usually on display in the first hall and cabinets of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin include Fra Angelico, Carlo Crivelli, and Sandro Botticelli. Titian and Raphael are in the 16th-century section — the wall color changes from light grey to pink.

Hall XVIII — Italian Renaissance Highlights in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin

Visitors enter the Italian Renaissance collection of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin in Hall XVIII and are immediately surrounded by some of the museum’s top masterpieces. With a bit of luck, you can see six paintings by Botticelli and masterpieces by Fra Filippo Lippi, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, David Ghirlandaio, Luca Signorelli, and Piero di Cosimo.

A few sculptures in this hall and elsewhere in the Gemäldegalerie hint at how the Berlin State Museum really would have preferred to display art: sculptures and paintings in the same space. This ideal is somewhat realized in the Bode Museum, where the exceptional collection of European sculptures is displayed with around 150 paintings from the Gemäldegalerie.

Sandro Botticelli Paintings in Berlin

Certainly not as famous as his works in the Uffizi, the paintings by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) in the Gemäldegalerie are still of exquisite quality. If not traveling, you’re likely to see all six in Hall XVIII.

The Bardi Altar (1484-5), or Thronende Maria mit dem Kind und den beiden Johannes / Mary Enthroned with the Child and the two Johns, or simply Madonna with the Saints, has a typical Fra Angelico subject. An enthroned Madonna is flanked by two saints, but the architectural elements were removed, with palm trees forming the baldachin.

It is easier to recognize the painter of Primavera in the round Raczyński Tondo painting,
The Virgin and Child with singing Angels / Maria mit dem Kind und singenden Engeln.

The large painting of Venus (1490) has her standing naked and without props, not even Amor, as if cut from Botticelli’s famous The Birth of Venus. (Compare with other Venus paintings in the museum, especially Cranach’s leggy Venuses, usually in Room III. Italian and German tastes were clearly different.)

Botticelli’s St Sebastian (1474) is one of around a dozen of the martyr in the Gemäldegalerie. This version and the painting by Peter Paul Rubens (influenced by Michelangelo’s sculptures) are particularly famous.

Fra Angelico’s The Last Judgment in Berlin

Carlo Crivelli in the Italian Collection in Berlin

Thronende Maria mit dem Kind, die Schlüsselübergabe an den Apostel Petrus und mit den Heiligen Johannes Capistranus, Emidius, Franziskus, Ludwig von Toulouse, dem seligen Giacomo della Marca und einem Bischof / Enthroned Mary with Child and Handing of the Keys to Peter (etc.), (1488) by Carlo Crivelli has almost as much detail in the patterns of the garments as names in the title. Although Antonio Vivarini and Giovanni Bellini influenced Crivelli, his style remained more typical of the late Gothic.

Italian Paintings from the 16th Century in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin

The Italian Renaissance art in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin continues in the 16th-century art halls, where the wall color is pink rather than the earlier light grey. The two top artists here are Raphael and Titian.

Raphael: Five Madonna and Child Paintings

The Gemäldegalerie in Berlin owns five paintings of the Madonna by Raphael (Raffael in German)(1483-1520). Usually, all five are on display, although individual works may be on loan.

The most famous and celebrated is the round Terranuova Madonna (c. 1505), or The Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John / Maria mit dem Kind, Johannes dem Täufer und einem Heiligen Knaben. This tondo was painted early after he arrived in Florence and was influenced by the works of Leonardo da Vinci.

(Somehow, the English title doesn’t mention the third, unidentified child in the painting.)

Titian Paintings in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin

The Gemäldegalerie has a notable self-portrait by Titian (Tizian in German)(1488/90-1576). This partially unfinished painting is one of only two known self-portraits of the artist and shows him in his 70s. (The other is in the Prado.)

In contrast, Titian’s Girl with a Platter of Fruit (c. 1555) exists in several versions. It is often exhibited next to Clarissa Strozzi (1540-1581) at the Age of Two, 1542. She was painted in Venice, where her parents, Roberto Strozzi and Magdalena de’ Medici, were in political exile from their native Florence.

More fun is Titian’s Venus mit dem Orgelspieler / Venus with the Organ Player (1550). Venus is in the fairly standard position of lying naked (with Cupid at her head), but the organist at her feet, pipe organ and all, is less common (although Titian painted various versions). Interpretations vary, but a pipe organ, even a relatively small Italian baroque one, remains a strange instrument for wooing a courtesan. 

Italian Baroque Paintings in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin

Caravaggio’s Amor Triumphant — Top Painting in the Gemäldegalerie

The most famous and possibly most popular painting in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin is the scandalous Caravaggio painting of Amor (in Hall XIV):

Victorious Cupid

In 1601-2, Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) painted “Omnia vincit amor” / Amor als Sieger / Amor Triumphant (also known as Love Conquers All, Amor Victorious, Victorious Cupid, Love Triumphant, Love Victorious, or Earthly Love).

Following Virgil — “Omnia vincit amor” (Love Conquers All) — Caravaggio painted the young god of love, Amor, as victorious over science, art, power, and fame. Volumes have been written about Caravaggio (and this painting), and although probably not seen as similarly erotic in period, it cannot be ignored that young Amor pushes his genitals forward to the center while the arrows and the left wing tip also clearly point at his crotch. Sensual, worldly love is the clear winner.

Matters were not helped by Caravaggio using one of his students (and possibly sometimes lover) as the model for a less-than-convincing Cupid face. (And using the same face for biblical figures in other paintings. He had a similar accusation for using a known prostitute as the model for Mary in Sant’Agostino in Rome.)

The painting originally belonged to Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1637), who assembled one of the finest art collections in Italy. Omnia vincit amor was the final painting in his gallery — often covered by a curtain, not out of embarrassment but rather to make the big reveal at the end of the tour the more dramatic.

The Divine Eros Defeats the Earthly Eros

Still, the painting caused a bit of a scandal, so Vincenzo’s brother, the more pious Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani (1544-1637), commissioned Der himmlische Amor besiegt den irdischen Amor / Sacred Love and Profane Love (or The Divine Eros Defeats the Earthly Eros, and various other variants) (1602-03) from Giovanni Baglione.

Here, a divine Eros clad in armor triumphs over an earthly Amor — still naked, but no genitals on view. This was more in line with official Catholic norms that earthly love should be tempered and restricted to marriage. (Forget for a moment that Amor / Eros / Cupid are not actually biblical figures.) (In a second version painted by Baglione, a satyr was changed to a devil with facial features resembling Caravaggio — now in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.)

Caravaggio and Baglione remained rivals, threatened and sued for libel, and competed for clients. Caravaggio had the misfortune of dying first, and that Baglione wrote the first Caravaggio biography. He couldn’t really criticize the art, as the quality was plain for all to see, but slandered Caravaggio’s character and questionable morals, which were very questionable whatever the age.

Four centuries later, Caravaggio has the last laugh — these two paintings hang in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, separated by only a doorway. Many visitors would miss the Baglione completely if it were not for the clear reference to it in the audio guide description of Amor Victorious.

Cecco del Caravaggio

Cecco del Caravaggio (possibly Francesco Boneri), who many assumed was the model for Caravaggio’s Amor, painted Christus vertreibt die Wechsler aus dem Tempel / Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (1610-15).

18th-Century Italian Paintings in the Gemäldegalerie

The Gemäldegalerie displays only a small number of 18th-century European paintings, with only a few from Italy. Highlights include views of Venice and paintings by Tiepolo.

Canaletto Giovanni Antonio Canal

The Gemäldegalerie exhibits several large paintings of Venice by Giovanni Antonio Canal, aka Canaletto. These paintings are worth a close-up look as there is almost photographic detail in some minor scenes, such as gondolas in Canal Grande (1758/63) and market traders in Campo di Rialto (1758/63). 

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Nearby, in stark contrast, is the rather grim Das Martyrium der Heiligen Agathe / The Martyrdom of St Agatha (1755) by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Where many artists portrayed the saving of St Agathe from prison, Tiepolo preferred to depict her martyrdom, where both her breasts were sliced off.

The Gemäldegalerie displays further 18th-century paintings from England, France, Spain, and Germany, together with the Italian works. However, this is not the museum’s forte, and only a small selection of high-quality works is on permanent display.

Far more impressive are world-famous collections of Dutch, Flemish, and German paintings from the 13th to 17th centuries.

On to the German, Dutch, and Flemish Masterpieces

How much time do you need to see the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin? If you’ve read this far, at least 90 to 120 minutes. At this point, you are about halfway through the art museum. To see the Dutch, Flemish, and German paintings from the 13th to 17th centuries, arguably the more important section of the museum, add another hour (and preferably two, if you have the energy to do it justice). Frustratingly, there is no cafe for a break inside the museum itself!

Even if you are exhausted and suffering from museum fatigue, you have to walk through the German-Dutch galleries anyway to reach the museum exit. The chronology is now reversed, which is not necessarily a bad thing. You’ll almost immediately reach some of the museum’s top highlights — the Dutch Golden Age paintings. The best Rembrandt paintings are in Room X; both Vermeers are in cabinet 18.

Don’t miss the Cranachs in Hall III. Remember, some of the finest paintings are off the main route in the smaller cabinets.