Editing Victoria and Albert Museum (section)

===Paintings (and miniatures)===
The collection includes about 1130 British and 650 European [[oil painting]]s, 6800 British [[watercolour]]s, [[pastel]]s and 2000 [[Portrait miniature|miniature]]s, for which the museum holds the national collection. Also on loan to the museum, from Her Majesty the Queen [[Elizabeth II]], are the [[Raphael Cartoons]]:<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/r/raphael-cartoons/ |title=Raphael Cartoons&nbsp;– Victoria and Albert Museum |publisher=vam.ac.uk |date=21 October 2010 |access-date=21 August 2011}}</ref> the seven surviving (there were ten) full-scale designs for tapestries in the [[Sistine Chapel]], of the lives of [[Saint Peter|Peter]] and [[Paul the Apostle|Paul]] from the [[Gospel]]s and the [[Acts of the Apostles]]. There is also on display a fresco by [[Pietro Perugino]], dated 1522, from the church of Castello at [[Fontignano]] ([[Perugia]]) which is amongst the painter's last works. One of the largest objects in the collection is the Spanish [[retable]] of St George, {{circa|1400}}, 670 x 486&nbsp;cm, in tempera on wood, consisting of numerous scenes and painted by Andrés Marzal De Sax in [[Valencia]].

19th-century British artists are well represented. John Constable and [[J. M. W. Turner]] are represented by oil paintings, watercolours and drawings. One of the most unusual objects on display is [[Thomas Gainsborough]]'s experimental showbox with its back-lit landscapes, which he painted on glass, which allowed them to be changed like slides. Other landscape painters with works on display include [[Philip James de Loutherbourg]], [[Peter De Wint]] and [[John Ward (painter)|John Ward]].

In 1857 John Sheepshanks donated 233 paintings, mainly by contemporary British artists, and a similar number of drawings to the museum with the intention of forming a 'A National Gallery of British Art', a role since taken on by [[Tate Britain]]; artists represented are [[William Blake]], [[James Barry (painter)|James Barry]], [[Henry Fuseli]], Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, Sir David Wilkie, [[William Mulready]], [[William Powell Frith]], [[John Everett Millais|Millais]] and [[Hippolyte Delaroche]]. Although some of Constable's works came to the museum with the Sheepshanks bequest, the majority of the artist's works were donated by his daughter Isabel in 1888,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/school_stdnts/schools_teach/teachers_resources/constable_resource/index.html |title=Constable&nbsp;– Victoria and Albert Museum |publisher=vam.ac.uk |date=14 August 2011 |access-date=21 August 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090420040450/http://www.vam.ac.uk/school_stdnts/schools_teach/teachers_resources/constable_resource/index.html |archive-date=20 April 2009 }}</ref> including the large number of sketches in oil, the most significant being the 1821 full size oil sketch<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/paintings/stories/Constable_Hay-Wain/index.html |title=Constable's Studies for the Hay-Wain&nbsp;– Victoria and Albert Museum |publisher=vam.ac.uk |date=14 August 2011 |access-date=21 August 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090726125807/http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/paintings/stories/Constable_Hay-Wain/index.html |archive-date=26 July 2009}}</ref> for ''[[The Hay Wain]]''. Other artists with works in the collection include: [[Bernardino Fungai]], [[Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger]], [[Domenico di Pace Beccafumi]], [[Fioravante Ferramola]], [[Jan Brueghel the Elder]], [[Anthony van Dyck]], [[Ludovico Carracci]], Antonio Verrio, [[Giovanni Battista Tiepolo]], [[Domenico Tiepolo]], Canaletto, [[Francis Hayman]], [[Pompeo Batoni]], [[Benjamin West]], [[Richard Wilson (painter)|Richard Wilson]], [[William Etty]], Sir [[Thomas Lawrence]], [[Francis Danby]], [[Richard Parkes Bonington]] and [[Alphonse Legros]].

Richard Ellison's collection of 100 British watercolours was given by his widow in 1860 and 1873 'to promote the foundation of the National Collection of Water-Color Paintings'. Over 500 British and European oil paintings, watercolours and miniatures and 3000 drawings and prints were bequeathed in 1868–1869 by the clergymen Chauncey Hare Townshend and Alexander Dyce.

Several French paintings entered the collection as part of the 260 paintings and miniatures (not all the works were French, for example [[Carlo Crivelli]]'s ''Virgin and Child'') that formed part of the Jones bequest of 1882 and as such are displayed in the galleries of continental art 1600–1800, including the portrait of [[Francis, Duke of Anjou|François, Duc d'Alençon]] by [[François Clouet]], [[Gaspard Dughet]] and works by [[François Boucher]] including his portrait of [[Madame de Pompadour]] dated 1758, [[Jean François de Troy]], [[Jean-Baptiste Pater]] and their contemporaries.

Another major Victorian benefactor was [[Constantine Alexander Ionides]], who left 82 oil paintings to the museum in 1901, including works by [[Botticelli]], [[Tintoretto]], [[Adriaen Brouwer]], [[Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot]], [[Gustave Courbet]], [[Eugène Delacroix]], [[Théodore Rousseau]], [[Edgar Degas]], [[Jean-François Millet]], [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti]], Edward Burne-Jones, plus watercolours and over a thousand drawings and prints

The Salting Bequest of 1909 included, among other works, watercolours by J. M. W. Turner. Other watercolourists include: [[William Gilpin (priest)|William Gilpin]], Thomas Rowlandson, William Blake, [[John Sell Cotman]], Paul Sandby, William Mulready, [[Edward Lear]], [[James Abbott McNeill Whistler]] and [[Paul Cézanne]].

There is a copy of Raphael's ''[[The School of Athens]]'' over 4 metres by 8 metres in size, dated 1755 by [[Anton Raphael Mengs]] on display in the eastern Cast Court.

Miniaturists represented in the collection include [[Jean Bourdichon]], [[Hans Holbein the Younger]], [[Nicholas Hilliard]], [[Isaac Oliver]], [[Peter Oliver (painter)|Peter Oliver]], [[Jean Petitot]], [[Alexander Cooper]], [[Samuel Cooper (painter)|Samuel Cooper]], [[Thomas Flatman]], [[Rosalba Carriera]], [[Christian Friedrich Zincke]], [[George Engleheart]], [[John Smart]], [[Richard Cosway]] and [[William Charles Ross]].

<gallery>
File:Alessandro_Botticelli_Portrait_of_a_Lady_(Smeralda_Brandini.jpg|[[Sandro Botticelli|Botticelli]]—''[[Portrait of a Lady known as Smeralda Brandini]], 1470-1475''
File:Rembrandt - The Departure of the Shunammite Woman.1.jpg|[[Rembrandt]]—''The Departure of the Shunammite Woman'', {{circa|1640}}
File:Tintoretto - Self-Portrait as a Young Man.jpg|[[Tintoretto]]—''Self-Portrait as a Young Man'', {{circa|1548}}
File:Raphael - The Miraculous Draft of Fishes - Google Art Project.jpg|[[Raphael]]—''The Miraculous Draught of Fishes'', 1515
File:V&A - Raphael, St Paul Preaching in Athens (1515).jpg|[[Raphael]]—''St Paul Preaching in Athens'', 1515
</gallery>