The collection of old art has been constituted since 1928 and contains especially icons on wood and painting on canvas of a local origin. It was rhythmically completed with acquisitions, donations and transfers, especially after 1960, counting nowadays more than one thousand of pieces. Chronologically integrating between the 17th and the 19th centuries, the collection thus completed has a heterogeneous shade, including icons originating in Wallachia, Transylvania and isolated in Maramuresh, Russia, Ukraina and Greece.

The first icons signed by painters from Wallachia and Transylvania, are part of the old set of icons of Banat Museum. They originate in churches from the country-side of Banat and confirm the circulation of painters and of their works among provinces, and the apprehension of the beneficaries from Banat towards the models emanated from the Romanians Countries. The icon of St. Nicholas by on unknown author, in the property of the church in Povergina in the inter-war period, two emperor icons and an icon the topic of Ascension to Heaven which we attributed to painter Simion Popa from Piteşti, the double-faced icon from the church of Berecuţa or the fragments of the Great Holiday icon, belonging, in the inter-war period, to the church from Coşava - are among the most reprezentative ones.

The villagers from Sinteşti bought from Transylvanean workshops the emperor icon of Virgin Mary with the infant, probably made by Jacov from Răşinari in 1743 or the one of St. George, a specific work for the artistic creation in the centre of Transylvania. In the inter-war period, in the church of Hedos village we find two emperor icons signed by the painter in Arad, Ştefan Teneţchi in 1762.

The source of the greatest part of the works entered in the collection of the museum after Second World War is not known. They are usually unsigned and they are not dated. However, on the basis of the rate author signatures, and talking in view the iconographic peculiarity and the one of form language, they can be still sorted, like the ones of the inter-war collection, icons dating especially in the 18th century, from the workshops of painters from Wallachia, Transylvania and Maramuresh.