The Gallery of Italian and French Painting takes up seven rooms on the first floor of the Museum. There are around 180 paintings - mainly by Italian masters, a smaller number of French works, and several 18th and 19th century paintings reflecting the fascination with Italian art of  some German artists.

The paintings are presented chronologically; their arrangement clearly shows various artistic circles and important trends.

In the first room, visitors can see the late Medieval beginnings and the further development of modern Italian painting, works of artists of the late Trecento (14th century) and the Quattrocento (15th century), and the beginning of Cinquecento (16th century) – from paintings created in the traditional Byzantine or in the refined international Gothic styles (e.g. Lorenzo Veneziano) to the superb examples of early and high Renaissance (Sandro Botticelli, Virgin and Child, Cima da Conegliano, Jesus Among the Doctors).

Large pale d’altare (altar paintings) created for some Italian churches (e.g. Paris Bordone, Sacra Conversazione) are exhibited in the second room. They are juxtaposed with small paintings made for private devotion (e.g. Pedro de Campagna, The Flagellation of Christ).

The next room presents an interesting collection of works by Italian followers of Caravaggio, the famous 17th century master whose revolutionary style inspired artists from various Italian centres – from Rome and Venice (Niccolò Renieri, The Carnival Scene) to Naples (Bernardo Cavallino, The Dream of Saint Joseph) .

The room dedicated to Venetian 16th and 17th century painting presents the works of the Renaissance  masters from the epoch of Giorgione and Titian: Cariani, Paris Bordone, Jacopo Tintoretto, Francesco Bassano, as well as some outstanding baroque painters (Strozzi, Carneo, Carlotto, and others).

The next rooms present various stylistic formulas of 17th and 18th Italian painting - decorative or expressive baroque, classicist and realistic tendencies. They are reflected in large religious paintings (Mattia Preti, Adoration of the Shepherds), mythological scenes (Luca Giordano, Prometheus), historical themes (Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Lucius Junius Brutus Kisses the Earth) as well as in sumptuous still lifes (Giuseppe Recco).

Within the landscape room (Marco Ricci, Antonio Tempesta) an interesting cabinet of 18th century architectonic capriccios (Bernardo Bellotto, Michele Marieschi) and town views (Gaspare Vanvitelli) is arranged separately.

Portraits from the 17th and 18th centuries predominate in the last room. There are official portraits of monarchs, but also intimate, private portraits. It is here that the most interesting examples of French painting are presented, such as Philippe de Champaigne‘s Portrait of Cardinal Richelieu. Apart from the portraits, there are also historical scenes (Antoine Watteau, French Dauphin Presented with an Order), genre scenes (Jean Baptiste Greuze, Hubert Robert), and landscapes (Joseph Vernet).