The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister und Skulpturensammlung bis 1800 (Old Masters Art Gallery and collection of sculptures up to 1800) is one of the most important museums in Dresden in Europe. It is located in the Zwinger palace, a Baroque palace built in the 18th century, where there are also two other museums (the Museum of Mathematics and Physics Instruments, the Porcelain Museum). It has a collection of over 2000 paintings and engravings and numerous sculptures from antiquity to the present day (the collection of sculptures from 1800 to the present day is instead kept in the Albertinum museum). The museum is part of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the state collection of the Land of Saxony.

The museum collection is famous all over the world for the great concentration of some of the major European masterpieces created between the 16th and 17th centuries. In the picture gallery, the museum itinerary is divided according to the different European schools: Italian, German, Flemish and Dutch, French and Spanish schools. The paintings are placed inside large gilded frames. Italian works of art are exhibited in rooms with deep red walls, while those of the Flemish and Dutch schools are surrounded by a green background.

The Italian school preserves numerous iconic works of the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, including "The Sistine Madonna" by Raphael, the "Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria" by Andrea del Sarto, the "San Sebastiano" by Antonello da Messina, the '"Adoration of the shepherds" by Correggio, the "Sleeping Venus" by Giorgione (also known as "Venus of Dresden"), the "Madonna della Rosa" by Parmigianino, the "Christ of the coin" by Titian, as well as several works by Carracci.

The German school preserves the works of masters such as Luca Canach the Elder, Albrecht Duerer and Hans Holbein the Younger. Also from the Flemish school there are numerous works by major exponents, such as Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Vermeer. Poussin's works are remembered from the French school, and Velazquez's from the Spanish one.

The sculpture collection is one of the largest and oldest collections of ancient statues outside of Italy. It includes plastic masterpieces from the Middle Ages to the end of the Baroque. It also includes a large collection of bronze statues of various sizes, by artists such as Giambologna, Susini and Adriaen de Vries, the equestrian figure of Marcus Aurelius (in reduced scale) made by Filarete in the mid-15th century. In addition to the statues, the collection also includes vases, terracotta, Assyrian relief tablets and Egyptian mummies.

Many works including paintings and sculptures share the rooms, to invite viewers to make a direct comparison between the two arts of painting and sculpture.