The Lviv picture gallery has one of the richest collections of works of art in the Ukraine. At present it includes more than twenty thousand works by artists and sculptors of different countries, of which a number are genuine masterpieces. The Lviv Gallery was officially opened in February 1907, though work on its organization had begun several vears before. Some of the exhibits date back to the seventeenth century when Lviv's first private collections were started. At that time a large art atudio was established in Lviv which orders from city residents for portraits, battle and historical paintings, as well as landscapes. Quite a few works by masters who were members of this studio have come down to our times. Executed in an expressive manner and with convincing veracity so that character of subject was sharply depicted, even verging at times on the grotesque style, the portraits represent a varied cross-section of typical townsmen. The first works of sculpture belong to the latter half of the sixteenth century and were mostly stone carvings of a devotional or memorial character. But by hte end of seventeenth and, in particular, during the eighteenth century, ornamental wood carving in Baroque style was richly developed, forming one of the brightest pages in the history of art connected with our native land as well as Europe in general. The Gallery also has a number of Renaissance stone sculptures made in Lviv, as well as a large collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century ornamental sculptural works. In the eight century, and even more in the nineteenth, private collections grew in number; in this same period the sendingabroad of hoarded national treasures was on the increase. From 1903 to 1906, a group of art specialists purchased a large number of pictures on funds donated by the city public. Included were W. Leopolski's "Death of Acern" and "The Miser", F. Wygrzewalski's "The Strike", J. Matejko's "Jan Kazimierz's Oaths", several works by J. Malczewski and other canvases, which remained on display in the Gallery up to the present day. In 1918 the Gallery received as an addition a collection which mostly included works by Polish artists of the nineteenth century - J. Matejko, J. Kossak, A. Grottger, to mention a few. After that, additions were made to the Gallery funds rather slowly. By 1933 there were as few as 2,458 exhibits divided into three sections: Polish Art, West European Art, and the so-called Raclawicka Ponorama. Up to 1939, the Gallery employed only one specialist; he acted both as museum director and its keeper. The Lviv Picture Gallery became possible, being founded on the basis of the original City Gallery and the Ukrainian National Museum. It received the nationalized private art collections and also works of pictorial art from the collections of the Stauropegean Brotherhood, the Church Seminary, the Historical Museum, etc. By 1940, the Gallery could boast of having as many as 5,950 works of art. As early as 1944, strenuous work began on restoring the building which had been damaged during the war and Gallery was opened for the third time on July 27, 1945. A primary aim of the scientific work at the Gallery was the compiling of a complete research catalogue of its various collections. In recent yaars, authentic authorship has been established of many works by Italian masters, among them works by Jacopo Palma Vecchio the Elder, by Maso da San Friano, D. Fetti, C. Dolci, F. Bencovich and many others. The Austrian art collection of an exceptional value - sketches to monumental paintings of the eighteenth century - has also been studied and the autors verified. Much has been done as the selection, restoration and stugy of paintings by the early Lviv artists, for over the past decade the Gallery has built up a very numerous collection of their works. As a result of profound studies made of all the collected works, of careful selection of the most valuable paintings from the storage repositories and their protracted restoration, as well as the purchase of neww acquisitions, an enlarged and permanent exhibition was set up in 1963 which basically remains unchanged to the present day. The exhibition opens with works of Italian art. Arranged in five halls, they present a broad and varied representative show. The highly humanistic and artistic standards reached by the masters of the Renaissance period may be seen in Donatello's "Crucifixion", Titian's "Portrait of a Man", M. Basaiti's "Portrait of an Astronomer" and works belonging to the Leonardo da Vinci school of art. The economical crisis and counter - Reformation which took place in Italy during the 30s of the sixteenth century exerted a strong influence even upon art, so that it lost the humanitarian ideals of the Renaissance. A vivid example of the art of this period (Mannerism) is J. Zucchi's "Coral Fishing" and also works by S. Anguisciola and T.Manzuoli (Maso da San Friano). Among works of Italian art of the eighteenth century you can see those by F. Bencovich, landscapes by A. Magnasco, F. Guardi and B. Bellotto; portraits by R. Carriera; canvases by other renowned artists. The Gallery's section devoted to Spanish art is rather scanty, though some paintings lend it a certain importance: e.g., J. Ribera's "St. Jerome" and F. Goya's "Maja on the Balcony". Netherlands, Dutch and Flemish art takes up two halls. Early paintings include those by L. Gassel, J. Van Scorel and G. Mostaert. The high noon of glory in Flemish art is represented by the exquisite still lifes of J. Van Kessel and "Portrait of a Man" by Peter Paul Rubens who combined the gift of a vibrant colourist with that of profound psychologist, and was one of the most famous of all Flemish painters. Dutch canvases include landscapes by S. Rombouts and M. Hobbema, genre scenes by A. Victoryns and D. Hals. Canvases that arouse exceptional interest are two paintings by G. Van Honthorst: "Man with Viol da Gamba" and "Woman with Guitar". The Lviv Gallery has excellent examples of the early German Renaissance. The gem of this section is "Three Saints" by an Alsatian master of the last third of the fifteenth century. In this painting Gothic tradition conflicts with the humanitarian ideals of the Renaissance, atypical feature of the German school of that time. A certain grotesque humour may be observed in the image of an ascetic fanatic in H. Multscher's (?) "Head of a Monk" and this painting makes a rather striking impression. The best features of the talented A. Mengs are embodied in his very penetrating "Portrait of Engraver F. Bartolozzi". The stormy development of monumental painting in Austrian art of the eighteenth century is represented in the Gallery by sketches drawn by the finest artists following that trend: in particular, "St. Thecla" by the renowned F.A. Maulbertsch. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, painting which drew upon mythology became rather popular throughout Europe. An example is the work of J. Grassi, Austrian portraits painter. He combines the features of his sitter, who commissioned the picture, with those of an ideal image in his "Portrait of Thereza Lubomirska as Hebe". As for French art, some of the artists represented in the Gallery are: J.E. Liotard, J.-B. Greuze, H. Robert, J.-J. Boissieu, F. Gerard, N. Diaz. This section was much enhanced later by G. De La Tour's painting "At the Usurer's" discovered in the collection in 1953. Additional acquisitions permitted the opening of another section in the Gallery: Foreign Art of the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Here, the new art of France, Germany, Spain, Holland, England, Sweden and America is quite well displayed. There are interesting canvases by A. Zorn, I. Zuloaga, I. Izraels and M. Tozzi. The Gallery has a unique collection of Polish art which is considered to be one of the best of its kind outside Poland. Included are paintings, sculptures and works of graphic arts - dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. These do not merely represent local schools of art, but are noted for the great variety of trends in Polish art which appeared at different stages of its development. Some of the finest works in this collection are those of A. Orlowski, several by A. Grottger including his best work "Nocturne", drawings and paintings by that brilliant master of historical compositions J. Matejko. There are also several paintings of value in the collections of Czech and Hungarian art. For instance, works by J. Kupecky, I. Revesz, P. Szule and B. Grunewald - Ivanyi. In 1966, a separate section was set up for Oriental art, and this collection is being successfully enlarged. Recently, a collection of Japanese art of the eighteenth and nineteenth century was formed in the Gallery: it includes prints by such past masters as Utamaro, Hiroshige and Hokusai. Also in 1966, when acquisitions were received following intensive efforts to search for and collect valuable examples, another new section was opened: Lviv Portraiture of the Sixteenth - Eighteenth Century. This includes such famous monuments as the tombstones of I. Herburt and K. Drogojowska, the painting "Portrait of I. Herburt" by an anonymous artist of the sixteenth century, portraits of the Kornyakts, both father and son, and "Portrait of M. Potocki" ascribed to W. Pietranowicz (17th century) and J. Kalinowicz (18th century) respectively; a few portraits by the Ukrainian painter O. Bilyavsky dated towards the end of the eighteenth century. The section for Russian Pre-Revolutionary Art was established in the early 1950s. The most valuable canvases are those of the eighteenth - century portrait painters, and the cream of this collection is I. Vishnvakov's (?) "Portrait of a Young Man". Russian landscape painters, A. Savrasov, I. Shishkin and I. Levitan included, are represented by a great variety of canvases. The original and distinctive talent of K. Korovin, for instance, is illustrated by a number of lovely and picturesque canvases and by his sketch for the scenic decoration to the ballet "Swan Lake" by Tchaikovsky. Other paintings viewer would be impressed with are those by V. Tropinin, I. Repin, V. Vereshchagin, N. Roerich and I. Grabar. Every year new and new works of art are added to the collection. The Gallery personnel have determined upon ever more complex and responsible tasks: besides the aim of adding to the exhibits, storing and carrying out the scientific examination of the works in their possession, they intend to increase cultural propaganda and the esthetic education of the working people by giving them access into the world of the beautiful.