The Old Masters Gallery inside the Zwinger's Semper Gallery is one of the great painting collections in Europe, assembled largely by Augustus the Strong and his son Augustus III through aggressive acquisition across the early eighteenth century. The collection focuses on Italian, Flemish, and Dutch Old Masters from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, and includes works by Raphael, Titian, Giorgione, Correggio, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Rubens. The Canaletto Room, displaying his panoramic views of Dresden circa 1750, serves as a historical document as much as art — the city it depicts was almost entirely destroyed two centuries later.
The Raphael Madonna draws the longest queues and justifies the attention: it is one of the best-preserved and most technically accomplished paintings of the High Renaissance, displayed in a dedicated room. Beyond it, the collection rewards extended time. The Vermeer, a Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, was cleaned in 2021 to reveal a hidden Cupid beneath the window — an original element the artist painted over and which subsequent restoration had missed. The gallery is housed in Gottfried Semper's building on the south side of the Zwinger courtyard, and even the architecture of the galleries themselves is worth attention.