Hungarian National Gallery

The Hungarian National Gallery was established in 1957, formed by splitting off the Hungarian-art holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts into a dedicated institution, later relocated into its current wing of Buda Castle's Royal Palace. It functions as the single best answer to the question "what does Hungarian art actually look like?" — a survey spanning medieval Gothic winged altarpieces (a genre Hungary produced with particular regional distinctiveness), Renaissance and Baroque religious painting, 19th-century Romantic-nationalist historical epics, and a substantial wing of 20th-century modernist and avant-garde work.

The single most-reproduced work in the collection is likely Mihály Munkácsy's dramatic 19th-century realist painting cycle, though the gallery's late-Gothic altarpiece rooms — recovered largely from churches in what was once Upper Hungary (now mostly Slovakia) — are its most historically significant holding, representing one of the most complete surviving sets of medieval winged altarpieces in Central Europe.