In addition to the two hundred masterpieces on display until 12 December - which include works by Leonardo, Raphael, El Greco, Goya, Manet, Monet, Schiele, Gauguin and Picasso -  the public will have the opportunity to see some outstanding works of Hungarian art preserved in the Hungarian National Gallery, including masterpieces by Munkácsy, Rippl-Rónai and Csontváry.

The most important autumn exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts also heralds Hungary's upcoming EU presidency and thus offers a splendid opportunity for Budapest to attract attention through a representative art show in the museum capital of Europe.  

The London exhibition is not simply a line-up of masterpieces,  since the works were selected to represent the Museum of Fine Arts' entire collection, which spans almost every period of art history. The show therefore features prominent works of art from European painting and sculpture from the Italian Quattrocento to the middle of the 20^th century, and also includes the emblematic Esterházy Madonna by Raphael, which despite never having been completed is a prominent piece of the museum's Renaissance Collection.     

In addition to works by El Greco, Ribera and Murillo from the Museum of Fine Arts' deservedly world famous Spanish Collection, Goya is represented by his awe-inspiringly beautiful portrait of a woman with an enigmatic smile. Included among the museum's sculpture collection on display to visitors to the London show is a small bronze rider attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, and a chalk drawing for a fresco depicting two warriors, also the work of the Florentine artist genius. The wealth of the museum's Modern Collection is represented by a selection with a cavalcade of styles from the end of the 19^th century. Elsewhere, the diverse oeuvres of the most sought-after artists of the first half of the 20^th century, namely Corot, Gauguin, Manet, Renoir, Monet, Picasso, Schiele and Chagall, are presented through paintings and drawings.  

Twenty Hungarian masterpieces from the holdings of the Hungarian National Gallery will also be exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, and London has seen the first foreign display of a complete medieval winged altar. The Still-life with Fruit, Parrots and Cockatoo by Jakab Bogdány, a Hungarian artist who won fame in England in the 1700s, is one of his most spectacular works. Visitors to the exhibition will be treated to József Rippl-Rónai's work titled Woman with a bird Cage as well as János Vaszary's Golden Age and masterpieces by Mihály Munkácsy, Károly Márkó, Pál Szinyei Merse, Károly Ferenczy and others. 

The London exhibition is not the first time that the two greatest Hungarian public collections have been presented at a prominent international venue. In recent years the treasures of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts have been displayed at independent exhibitions at the Louvre in Paris, the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg and at joint exhibitions with the Viennese Kunsthistorisches Museum in Tokyo and Kyoto. More recently members of the Moscow public had the opportunity to see the masterpieces of the Museum of Fine Arts in the Pushkin Museum. The Hungarian National Gallery recently enjoyed major international success with its 2008-2009 exhibition titled Hungarian Fauves at three French museums.