Ginevra de' Benci [obverse]

Leonardo da Vinci

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National Gallery of Art

Washington, D.C. · Founded 1937

Leonardo's only painting in the Americas hangs here, in Washington, and admission has never cost anything. Andrew Mellon gave the collection and the building to the nation on one condition: that it carry no man’s name.

150,000+
Works in the NGA collection: 1937
Founded: Free
Admission: 10:00–17:00
Daily opening hours

831 works from this collection play free on your TV, phone or tablet. Press play and one starts now.

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What to see

A first visit to the National Gallery usually comes down to three things: the only Leonardo painting in the Americas, the American rooms of the West Building, and the Sculpture Garden across the lawn. If you have an hour, these are the works to spend it on.

Ginevra de' Benci [obverse] — Ginevra de’ Benci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci, and the only Leonardo painting in the Americas.

The American galleries
A Sioux Chief, His Daughter, and a Warrior · George Catlin
Catlin, Stuart, Whistler, Homer, in the West Building.

The Alba Madonna
Raphael painted it around 1510, in the round, for a chapel in Nocera.

Watson and the Shark
John Singleton Copley
Copley’s 1778 rescue in Havana harbour, painted from a survivor’s account.

Woman with a Parasol
Monet’s wife and son on a windy day at Argenteuil, 1875.

The Sculpture Garden
Free, outdoors, and open late through the summer.

The collections

The National Gallery collects across eight curatorial areas, from thirteenth-century altarpieces to photographs made this century. The paintings hang in the West Building, the modern and contemporary work in I. M. Pei’s East Building, and the works on paper come out in rotation to protect them from the light.

European paintings
Tavern Scene · David Teniers the Younger
The Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, including the Leonardo and Raphael’s Alba Madonna.

American art
Harvest Scene in the Delaware Valley · George Inness
Copley’s Watson and the Shark through the twentieth century.

Modern and contemporary art
The Crowning at Rheims of the Dauphin (Joan of Arc series: V) · Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel
The East Building, designed by I. M. Pei and opened in 1978.

Sculpture
Orpheus with a Lyre and a Long Scroll [reverse] · Giovanni Boldù
From Renaissance bronzes to the Sculpture Garden, added in 1999.

Decorative arts

Furniture, ceramics, medals, and metalwork.

Prints
Binnenalster mit Jungfernstieg · Fritz Stoltenberg
Around 75,000 of them, one of the largest holdings anywhere.

Drawings

Works on paper shown in rotation to limit light exposure.

Photographs
Portrait of a Young Man · Isaac Rehn
The nineteenth century to the present day.

Artists

The Gallery has collected European masters since Mellon’s founding gift and American painters ever since, from colonial portraitists to the Ashcan School. These are the artists whose work you can stream on Momentable, deepest holdings first.

Portrait of a Woman — Alphonse Legros
French · 1837–1911 · French Realism
Alphonse Legros was a French, later British, painter, etcher, sculptor, and medallist. He moved to London in 1863 and later was naturalized as British. He was important as a teacher in the British etching revival.

Lot and His Daughters [reverse] — Albrecht Dürer
German · 1471–1528 · German Renaissance
Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance.

Internegative for Horses. Trotting. Abe Edgington. No. 28 — Eadweard Muybridge
English · 1830–1904
Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection.

The Petition — Jean-Louis Forain
French · 1852–1931
Jean-Louis Forain was a French Impressionist painter and printmaker, working in media including oils, watercolour, pastel, etching and lithograph.

A Young Man Seated at a Table (possibly Govaert Flinck) — Rembrandt van Rijn
Dutch · 1606–1669 · Dutch Golden Age painting
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, known mononymously as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of Western art.

The Trap — Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
French · 1864–1901 · Post-impressionism
Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Montfa, known as Toulouse-Lautrec, was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator.

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Artworks

Public-domain works from the National Gallery of Art, free to stream. Open any one to see it full-screen on Momentable, with what the museum records about it.