What is National Gallery, London?
The '''National Gallery, London''' is an art gallery in [[London]], [[England]], which has one of the finest collections of European paintings in the world. What makes this gallery so important is that, although there are bigger galleries, ''The National Gallery'' has many paintings of very high quality and also because it has paintings by famous artists whose works are very rare. These rare paintings include works by [[Duccio]], [[Masaccio]], [[Uccello]], Piero della Francesca, [[Leonardo]], [[Giorgione]], [[Michelangelo]], [[Caravaggio]], [[Vermeer]], Chardin, Klimt, Rousseau and [[Odilon Redon|Redon]]. ''The National Gallery'' is on [[Trafalgar Square]], which is one of the busiest tourist places in London. It is a grand building of pale grey limestone, with a central [[dome]] and a large Classical style porch (''portico'') like an [[Parthenon|Ancient Greek]] temple. To the left side, the gallery has a large new building called ''The Sainsbury Wing''. [[File:Nationalgallery.jpg|thumb|265px|The National Gallery, photo Yorick Petey.]] == History == In 1823 a collector called Sir George Beaumont offered to give his famous collection of paintings to the British [[Government]] to start a public art gallery. In 1824 another famous collection of paintings was on sale. The owner, John Julius Angerstein, had died. It looked as if his paintings would be sold outside England. Then there was another offer of paintings from a third collector, The Reverend Holwell Carr. The [[Parliament]] had to make a quick decision. The [[Parliament]] voted that a national collection should be started and a gallery should be built. They gave 60,000 Pounds Sterling to buy the Angerstein paintings. They got 38 pictures and were able to display them publicly in the Angerstein House. [[File:Raphael Madonna of the Pinks.jpg|thumb|left|Raphael's ''Madonna with the pinks'', painted about 1506, is one of the latest important paintings bought by the National Gallery.]] The collection grew quickly with the Beaumont and Holwell Carr paintings,