A few years ago the museum decided to present Italian painting art from the 15 18th century. The fact that a comprehensive show on Italian painting has never been presented in Hungary played a crucial role in our decision. The first exhibition was held in 2009­2010 entitled From Botticelli to Tizian. It was one of the greates event in the modern days of the Museum of Fine Arts, with over 230.000 visitors. The following representative exhibition dealing with Italian painting art was presented as the season closing event during the Italian-Hungarian Cultural weeks. The exhibition was entitled From Caravaggio to Canaletto - Italian Masterpiece Paintings of Two Decades . This exhibition will have a special significance both for the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian cultural scene since a comprehensive exhibition on Italian Baroque art has never been held in the world so far.

Hungary and Italy were deeply related in terms of art in the 17-18th century, especially with north Italy. New innovations of Baroque and Rocco painting were introduced to Hungary through a great number of Italian masters of art (eg. Pietro Liberi, Antonio Galli Bibbiena, Carlo Innocenzo Carlone, Francesco Casanova etc), and of course the great many of works of art that came from Italy to Hungary. Our collection of Italian Baroque and Rococo consists of 600 items, and is the richest collection owned by our museum. The core os the collection comes from famed noble families of Hungary such as the Esterházys, the Pálffys and the Zichys, however, there are also works from the art gallery of the late Patriarch of Venice, János László Pyrker. Károly Pulszky ,the first manager of the National Art Gallery also added agreat masterpieces to the collection.

Works from nearly all the significant art centres of Italy, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Genoa, Milan, Florence and also Venice are represented in the collection . Works by significant artists e.g. Annibale Carracci, Niccolò Renieri, Artemisia Gentileschi, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Guercino), Francesco Furini, Daniele Crespi, Luca Giordano, Bernardo Cavallino, Bernardo Strozzi, Giovanni Battista és Domenico Tiepolo, Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto), and also Bernardo Bellotto are to be seen.

40 works are from the museum collection 60 are from various museums of Europe and America such as the National Gallery of London, the Musée du Louvre of Paris, Museo del Prado of Madrid and the Museo Thyssen­Bornemisza, the Galleria degli Uffizi of Florence, the Gemäldegalerie of Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister of Dresden, Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna or the Hermitage of Saint Petersburg lent us pictures to show.

The third section is paintings from private collections, many of them are still unpublished, thus attracting some interest from professionals. The works we borrowed are intended to fill gaps in terms of genres and themes the museum collection lacks. We had to include works by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in our anthology, by whom, however, there is no work included in the Museum of Fine Arts collection neither in any of the Private Collections in Hungary. This time, however, we manage to show several of the works by significant artists from Italy.