The Albertina collection

World famous graphic art and more

Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen starts collecting graphic art and drawings systematically from around 1770. And from the start he makes sure everything is catalogued and ordered. When Duke Albert dies in 1822, his collection comprises more than 14,000 drawings and over 200,000 prints and offers a representative cross-section of work from the early 15th century until the early 19th century.

Under his heirs, his nephew and adopted son Archduke Charles and Charles’ son Archduke Albrecht, the collection is augmented. The Archduke Albrecht nephew and heir, Duke Frederick (1856-1936), is the last imperial palace resident and custodian of the collection. After WW1 the Albertina collection passes into the hands of the Austrian Republic and in the following 100 years continually added to.

Today the Albertina Museum houses one of the most extensive graphic art collections in the world, with nearly 50,000 drawings and some 900,000 prints from the Late Gothic Period until the present day.

This includes works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Cézanne, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. Perhaps the most famous drawing in the collection at the Albertina is the Young Hare by Albrecht Dürer from 1502.

But the Albertina has even more to offer. For instance the famous Batliner collection, on permanent loan to the museum since 2007. The Batliner collection is one of the most significant private collections in Europe, containing over 500 international works of classical modern art from the French Impressionists to the present day. It includes paintings by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso.

In addition the Albertina Museum possesses an architectural collection comprising nearly 50,000 plans as well as a collection of photographs from the mid-19th century to the present day.