The Main Vestibule, just beyond the Portico entrance, leads up the stairs to Central Hall, Room 1 and the galleries on the main floor. Boris Anrep's mosaics were added in the 1920s and 30s, depicting leading figures of the day as characters from mythology.
Main Vestibule
Paintings in this room
Domenichino and assistants
The mythological story of the musical competition between the god Apollo and the satyr Marsyas is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Marsyas challenged Apollo to a music contest, which the god won. To punish him for his presumption, Apollo skinned him alive.This is one of ten frescoes by Domenichino a...
Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860) was a pioneering writer and art historian who made significant contributions to art criticism and literature. She is considered England’s first female art historian. Born in Dublin and educated in London, she began her career as a governess before rising to promi...
This bust was commissioned by the National Gallery to acknowledge Paul Getty’s £50 million donation to the institution. It sits inside the Portico Entrance and was designed to make a pair with Sir Francis Chantrey’s marble bust of 1836 depicting Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough, a Victorian po...