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Big screen playlist

What’s playing on the Big Screen in the Sainsbury Wing at the Gallery? You may not have seen everything on your visit, but if something caught your eye and you need to know more, below is a list of all the paintings and films currently being displayed.

Big art

An experience of our paintings as never before – magnified to super scale, with large-scale pans that reveal details of the painting surface.

A Young Woman standing at a Virginal
A Young Woman standing at a Virginal
Johannes Vermeer
The young woman at the keyboard holds our eye with a direct gaze. The empty chair suggests she is expecting someone and the large painting of a naked Cupid, the god of erotic love, on the wall behind her may be a signal that she is waiting for her lover. Scenes of music making were a popular genr...
Room 16
The Supper at Emmaus
The Supper at Emmaus
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
On the third day after the Crucifixion two of Jesus’s disciples were walking to Emmaus when they met the resurrected Christ. They failed to recognise him, but that evening at supper he ‘... took bread, and blessed it, and brake and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and...
Room 32
The Toilet of Venus ('The Rokeby Venus')
The Toilet of Venus ('The Rokeby Venus')
Diego Velázquez
Venus, the goddess of love, reclines languidly on her bed, the curve of her body echoed in the sweep of sumptuous satin fabric. The pearly tones of her smooth skin contrast with the rich colours and lively brushstrokes of the curtain and sheets.Venus‘ face is reflected in the mirror held up by he...
Room 30
The Ansidei Madonna
The Ansidei Madonna
Raphael
This is the main panel of the altarpiece Raphael painted for the Ansidei family chapel in the Servite Church of S. Fiorenzo in Perugia in 1505.The Virgin sits in majesty on a carved wooden throne with the Christ Child on her lap. She draws his attention to a passage in the book on her knee. A str...
Room 61
The Arnolfini Portrait
The Arnolfini Portrait
Jan van Eyck
This must be one of the most famous and intriguing paintings in the world. A richly dressed man and woman stand in a private room. They are probably Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini, an Italian merchant working in Bruges, and his wife.Although the room is totally plausible – as if Jan van Eyck ha...
Room 52
The Virgin of the Rocks
The Virgin of the Rocks
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo’s mysterious painting shows the Virgin Mary with Saint John the Baptist, Christ’s cousin, and an angel. All kneel to adore the infant Christ, who in turn raises his hand to bless them. They are crowded in a grotto overhung with rocks and dense with vegetation.The painting was part of a l...
Room 51
The Wilton Diptych
The Wilton Diptych
English or French (?)
This small, portable diptych is one of a handful of English panel paintings to have survived from the Middle Ages. Made for Richard II, King of England from 1377 to 1399, in the last five years of his life, it combines religious and secular imagery to embody his personal conception of kingship.O...
Room 51
Venus and Mars
Venus and Mars
Sandro Botticelli
Venus, the goddess of love, looks over at her lover Mars. She is alert and dignified, while he – the god of war – is utterly lost in sleep. He doesn‘t even notice the chubby satyr (half child, half goat) blowing a conch shell in his ear.This picture was probably ordered to celebrate a marriage, a...
Room 62
Bacchus and Ariadne
Bacchus and Ariadne
Titian
One of the most famous paintings in the National Gallery, Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne illustrates a story told by the classical authors Ovid and Catullus. The Cretan princess Ariadne has been abandoned on the Greek island of Naxos by Theseus, whose ship sails away in the distance. Bacchus, god o...
Room 8
The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors
Hans Holbein the Younger
Jean de Dinteville, the man on the left, is shown on his second diplomatic mission to England on behalf of Francis I, King of France. To the right is his close friend, Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur. This portrait was painted at a time of religious upheaval in Europe. Although the pope had re...
Room 4
The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb)
The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb)
Michelangelo
This is one of perhaps only three surviving panel paintings by the great Florentine artist Michelangelo. It shows Christ’s body being carried to his tomb. It was probably made for a funerary chapel in the church of S. Agostino, Rome – commissioned in 1500 and left unfinished when Michelangelo ret...
Room 2
A Landscape at Sunset
A Landscape at Sunset
Claude-Joseph Vernet
This is one of two paintings originally commissioned as a pair by Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland, in June or July 1772. However, concerned that the King was slow to pay, Vernet instead sold the pictures to the British officer and East India Company official Lord Clive (known as Clive of India...
Room 35
The Fortress of Königstein from the North
The Fortress of Königstein from the North
Bernardo Bellotto
Sharp and angular, the Saxon fortress of Königstein, about 25 miles southeast of Dresden, is silhouetted against a pale sky. The artist, Bellotto, was from Venice, and he has applied the traditions of Venetian view painting – a high level of detail, the large scale – to this northern landscape. I...
Room 37
The Watering Place
The Watering Place
Thomas Gainsborough
A group of cattle and goats has been herded to drink in a stream or pool. Two country girls, a child and a man sit quietly on the sandy bank. The sun begins to sink behind the distant hills, casting a golden evening light over the peaceful woody landscape.Gainsborough’s painting is based on a dra...
Room 34
Ophelia among the Flowers
Ophelia among the Flowers
Odilon Redon
Ophelia, the doomed heroine in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, rests within a luminous space filled with vibrantly-coloured flowers. Unlike her vivid surroundings, her face is drained of colour – we are not sure if she is dead or only sleeping. This association of youthful, but ill-fated, beau...
Room 42
Surprised!
Surprised!
Henri Rousseau
A tiger crouches low in thick jungle foliage, its back arched and teeth bared. It is not entirely clear what is happening: is the tiger cowering from the flash of lightning, or is it stalking prey?Surprised! was the first of around 20 ‘jungle’ paintings that Rousseau produced, which are among his...
Room 45
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey
Paul Delaroche
Lady Jane Grey reigned for just nine days as Queen of England following the death of Edward VI in 1553: she was deposed by the faction supporting Edward’s half-sister and heir, Mary Tudor. Tried for treason, the 17-year-old Lady Jane was beheaded at Tower Green on 12 February 1554.Delaroche shows...
Room 38
The Fighting Temeraire
The Fighting Temeraire
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Turner’s painting shows the final journey of the Temeraire, as the ship is towed from Sheerness in Kent along the river Thames to Rotherhithe in south-east London, where it was to be scrapped. The veteran warship had played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, but by 1838 was...
Room 40
The Hay Wain
The Hay Wain
John Constable
The view is of the millpond at Flatford on the River Stour. Flatford Mill was a watermill for grinding corn, operated by the Constable family for nearly a hundred years. It still survives and is about a mile from Constable’s birthplace at East Bergholt, Suffolk. The house on the left also survive...
Room 40
Lake Keitele
Lake Keitele
Akseli Gallen-Kallela
This painting shows Lake Keitele in central Finland. The zigzag pattern on the water’s surface is a natural occurrence caused by the interaction of the wind with the lake’s currents, but it is also intended to evoke the wake created by Väinämöinen, the poet-hero of the Finnish saga Kalevala, as h...
Room 44
Self Portrait in a Straw Hat
Self Portrait in a Straw Hat
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
Self Portrait in a Straw Hat is a signed copy by the artist of a very popular self portrait that she painted in 1782 and which is now in the collection of the baronne Edmond de Rothschild. The pose is deliberately modelled on Rubens’s Portrait of Susanna Lunden (?) (also in the National Gallery’s...
Room 15

Curious stories

A slow-paced tour of a painting encouraging curiosity.

Image: Joseph Mallord William Turner, 'Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway'

Is there engineering in art, as well as art in engineering?

On display in Room 40

We look at Turner's famous depiction of a steam train in 'Rain, Steam and Speed' (1844) and stormy seas in 'Dutch Boats in a Gale' (1801). Rob Bell from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers gives us an engineer's take on these two paintings at the National Gallery.

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Image: Bartolomé Bermejo, 'Saint Michael Triumphs over the Devil'

How did Bermejo capture good and evil in this painting?

On display in Room 64

Snakes for arms; scaly, avian legs; and moth-like wings, find out why this late-Gothic demon was the stuff of nightmares in its day with Daniel Sobrino Ralston, CEEH Associate Curator for Spanish Paintings.

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Behind the scenes

What happens behind the closed doors of the National Gallery.

Displaying C C Land: The Wonder of Art

To celebrate the end of our 200th birthday year, we have been working very hard behind the scenes on a major redisplay, presenting the paintings in a new way, through fresh narratives, themed rooms and unexpected pairings across time.  

'The Execution of Lady Jane Grey' by Paul Delaroche

On display in Room 38

Our art handlers are shown here rehanging Paul Delaroche’s 'The Execution of Lady Jane Grey' in the Towards Modernism rooms.

'Whistlejacket' by George Stubbs

On display in Room 34

Our art handlers are shown here rehanging George Stubbs’s 'Whistlejacket' in the Rococo to Romanticism rooms.

Uncovering the secrets underneath Orazio Gentileschi's 'The Finding of Moses'

On display in Room 31

Our conservators Kristina Mandy, Silvia Tagliante and Marek Goliaš are shown here restoring Orazio Gentileschi’s 'The Finding of Moses'. The conservation process has revealed interesting information about how Orazio worked and how he developed the composition.
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Slow looking

A closer look at the skills used at the National Gallery to care for its collection.

Uncovering the secrets underneath Orazio Gentileschi's 'The Finding of Moses'

On display in Room 31

Our conservators Kristina Mandy, Silvia Tagliante and Marek Goliaš are shown here restoring Orazio Gentileschi’s 'The Finding of Moses'.

They use small brushes to apply liquid putty to areas where paint and ground layers have been lost. These filled in gaps, replicating the original texture and canvas pattern, help to preserve the painting and blend in with the original surrounding areas. 

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Creating a new frame for 'The San Pier Maggiore Altarpiece'

On display in Room 57

Our framing team is shown here constructing a frame for the four-tiered altarpiece, originally made for the high altar of the choir of the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence. This enables us to display the altarpiece in a way that more closely reflects its original setting.