Five centuries of great European painting in the revised edition of the catalogue of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisboa In April 1899, Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian acquired his first painting. Between then and 1953, the year in which he added the last canvas to his Collection, over half a century elapsed. The range of works contained in this section of the Collection spans almost five hundred years of art history and reveals a particularly eclectic taste, something that in fact extends to the great diversity of works exhibited at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. A dominant theme of the set of two hundred and twenty-nine paintings acquired and kept by the Collector, of which more than half are in storage, reflects the special interest that he had for portrait and landscape painting. Indeed, these genres are given particular preponderance in the exhibition open to the public at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon since October 2nd, 1969. The one hundred and twelve paintings on permanent exhibition in the museum’s galleries, which are published in full here, also confirm this preference.
