Portrait Gallery

The Portrait Gallery contains more than 70 oil paintings, alongside prints, sculptures and other objects by German, English and Polish portrait artists. Its arrangement follows the tradition of family portrait galleries, which established a family's identity and emphasised continuity across generations.

The collection survived the post-war years without being dispersed or destroyed. Its paintings trace European portraiture from the Renaissance through Baroque, Neoclassicism, Biedermeier and academic painting to twentieth-century styles. They depict members of the last three families to own the castle: the Promnitz, Anhalt and Hochberg families, whose ownership spanned the mid-sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Clothing, poses and pictorial conventions change across the portraits. The selection includes the former owners together with their ancestors and relatives.