May 10, 2025
From Giotto to Monet: The National Gallery Rehangs 1,000 Masterpieces
To open its third century, the National Gallery rehung around 1,000 works in 'The Wonder of Art' — a top-to-bottom retelling of European painting.
Alongside its new entrance, the National Gallery used its bicentenary to do something it rarely attempts: rehang almost the entire collection. 'The Wonder of Art' reordered around 1,000 paintings across the building, tracing Western European art from the gold-ground altarpieces of the 13th century to the shimmer of the Impressionists.
Visitors now follow a broadly chronological journey — Giotto, Van Eyck, Botticelli, Titian, Rembrandt, Turner — diverting into rooms devoted to single artists and themes before arriving, finally, at Monet.
For a collection assembled over two centuries, it was a chance to tell the whole story afresh — and to remind the world why these free public rooms remain among the greatest classrooms of art anywhere.
Image: “Venus and Mars National Gallery” — Sandro Botticelli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.