The Albertina is a museum in the first district of Vienna. It houses one of the most important and extensive graphic art collections in the world. It comprises around 50,000 drawings and watercolors, as well as some 900,000 graphic art works, ranging from the Late Gothic era to the present, as well as photographs and architectural drawings. The museum also houses temporary exhibitions.
Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen (1738-1822) founded the Graphic Art Collection between 1770 and 1822. He brought his graphics collection from Brussels, where he had acted as the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, to his residence, Palais Taroucca in Vienna next to the Hofburg. At the year of the duke’s passing, the collection comprised some 14,000 drawings and around 200,000 sheets of graphic art prints, which covered all of the important art movements from the end of the Middle Ages to the first quarter of the 19th century.
In the 1820s Archduke Charles, the foster son of Duke Albert and Maria Christina, initiated further modifications of the building by Joseph Kornhäusel, which affected mostly the interior decoration. In early 1919 ownership of both the building and the collection passed from the Habsburgs to the newly founded Republic of Austria. In 1920 the collection of prints and drawings was united with the collection of the former imperial court library. The name Albertina was established in 1921. In March 1945 the Albertina was heavily damaged by Allied bomb attacks. The building was rebuilt in the years after the war and was completely renovated and modernized from 1998 to 2003.
In spring 2007, one of Europe’s greatest private collections of classical modern art came to the Albertina as a permanent loan from the Rita and Herbert Batliner Foundation in Liechtenstein. It includes outstanding works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon. These masterpieces can be seen in a new permanent exhibition at the Albertina.
Habsburg Staterooms
The 21 Habsburg Staterooms are spread out over two floors of the Albertina palace. The magnificent Hall of the Muses forms the centerpiece, flanked on either side by stately apartments. The palace’s original Louis XI décor had been ordered from the royal court ateliers in Paris and Versailles for Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen’s Brussels residence, Laeken Castle. In 1822, Archduke Carl had the interiors redone in Empire style, commissioning the Viennese furniture manufacturer Joseph Danhauser (1780-1829) to renovate the entire palace.Of the décor from the second half of the 19th century when the palace belonged to Archduke Albrecht, only the Rococo Room survives. The Spanish Apartments were created under Albrecht’s nephew and heir, Archduke Friedrich. This was the only permanent residence of the Spanish royal family outside Spanish territory. When the palace was expropriated by the new Austrian state in 1919, Friedrich was permitted to take all its furnishings with him into exile in Hungary. The now empty apartments were converted into a study hall, a library, exhibition rooms, depots and office space.
In 2000, work began on the comprehensive restoration of the staterooms. The return of the original furniture was secured through successive acquisitions as well as loans from the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art (MAK) and the Federal Furniture Depot’s Imperial Furniture Collection. International specialists took part in the restoration work, which was largely concluded by 2007. After decades of neglect, today the lavish period interiors transport the visitor back in time, evoking the age of Neoclassicism and the private and ceremonial lives of the Habsburgs who lived in the palace.
