Artworks speak to us. We must only listen, open ourselves to them. Then we can hear what they have to say. Specialists concentrate on styles and epochs, techniques and influences, but one can also look at these works very differently: as inspirations for highly personal observations, meditations and narratives.

The Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum developed from the art collections of the House of Habsburg. Today it is one of the largest and most important of its kind in the world.

The foundations of the collection were laid and its main emphases set in the 17th century: 16th-century Venetian painting (Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto), 17th-century Flemish painting (Peter Paul Rubens, Sir Anthony Van Dyck), Early Netherlandish painting (Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden) and German Renaissance painting (Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach). Among the other highlights in the Picture Gallery are its holdings of pictures by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which are unique worldwide, as well as masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Raphael, Caravaggio or Velázquez.

Writer and historian Philipp Blom and his wife, the writer Veronica Buckley, have set off on numerous journeys of discovery through the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. In eight thematic tours they invite readers to cast a new gaze upon the collection.

Philipp Blom

Autor/in

Der Schriftsteller und Historiker Philipp Blom studierte Philosophie, Judaistik und moderne Geschichte in Wien und Oxford. Neben historischen Büchern wie Der taumelnde Kontinent: Europa 1900–1914 und Die zerrissenen Jahre: 1918–1938 (Hanser, 2011 u. 2014) schreibt er über die französische Aufklärung (Böse Philosophen, Hanser, 2013).

Veronica Buckley

Autor/in

Veronica Buckley studierte Sprachen, Musik und Geschichte in ihrem Heimatland Neuseeland sowie in London und Oxford. Sie lebt als Autorin, Journalistin und Übersetzerin in Wien. Ihr jüngstes Buch „Madame de Maintenon: Die geheime Frau Ludwigs XIV.“ erschien 2012 bei Suhrkamp Insel.