When the museum was created in 1937, it became the heir not only the National School collection, but also of its headquarters, a 1908 eclectic style building projected by Spanish architect Adolfo Morales de los Ríos.

The collection includes more than 20,000 pieces, among paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, of Brazilian and international artists, ranging from High Middle Ages to contemporary art.

[2][3] Although the museum was officially established on 13 January 1937 and inaugurated on 19 August 1938, its history is much older, ranging back to the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil in 1808.

Fleeing the invasion of Portugal by French troops, King John VI established himself in Rio de Janeiro, bringing with him an assemblage of works of art which originally belonged to the Portuguese Royal Collection.

After the king's return to Europe, a major part of this collection stayed in Brazil and is identified as the main core of European art in the museum.

[4] The French Artistic Mission was charged by John VI to organise the Royal School of Sciences, Arts and Crafts in Rio de Janeiro.

In the following decades, the Imperial Academy, heir of John VI's holdings, was able to expand this collection, gathering an important assemblage of paintings and forming a glyptotheque.

Between 1906 and 1908, a new building was constructed for the National School of Fine Arts in the Central Avenue (now Avenida Rio Branco), very close to the new main square of the city (the Cinelândia).

[6] The style of the new building, designed by Spanish architect Adolfo Morales de los Ríos, is clearly inspired by the Louvre Museum in Paris.

[citation needed] When the museum was created in 1937 by the education minister Gustavo Capanema, it inherited the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes' holdings and was installed in its headquarters; the school's administrative offices, studios and most of the courses stayed in the building.

Besides the collection of about 19,000 titles, it comprises more than 12,000 audiovisual items, iconographic and textual documents, rare books, newspapers, magazines, catalogues, and other materials related to the institution's history, from the Imperial Academy to nowadays.

), Manuel de Araújo Porto-alegre, Pedro Weingärtner, Rodolfo Amoedo, João Zeferino da Costa, Henrique Bernardelli, Eliseu Visconti, Castagneto, Hipólito Caron, Antônio Parreiras, and many others.

and a more representative collection of modernist painters active in the 1930s and on (Cândido Portinari, Djanira, Guignard, Cícero Dias, Alfredo Volpi, Maria Leontina, Ivan Serpa, Iberê Camargo, etc.).

The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes has one of the most important collections of engravings in the country, an assemblage of works which is able to provide a remarkable panorama of the historical development of print technique in Brazil.

The collection comprises works by August Off, Emil Bauch, Carlos Oswald, Oswaldo Goeldi, Lívio Abramo, Lasar Segall, Maria Bonomi, Fayga Ostrower, Carlos Scliar, Poty Lazzarotto, Edith Behring, Anna Letycia Quadros, Dionísio del Santo, Anna Bella Geiger, Rubens Gerchman.

It comprises, aside from the painters of the French Artistic Mission, names such as Jacques Courtois, Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, François Bonvin, Théodule Ribot, Jules Breton, Jean-Paul Laurens, Constant Troyon, Jean-Jacques Henner, Jules Dupré, Gustave Doré, Henri Harpignies, Alfred Sisley, Armand Guillaumin, Edmond Aman-Jean and Henri Martin.

The Latin American painting is represented by a number of anonymous works of the Cuzco School and some modern artists, such as the Argentinians Benito Quinquela Martín and Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós.

The collection also include three bronze busts by François Rude, Constantin Meunier's The Harvester, Auguste Rodin's Meditation without Arms, and other works by Antoine-Louis Barye, António Teixeira Lopes, etc.

Several works in the collection are by foreign artists active in Brazil during the 19th century, such as the French brothers Marc and Zéphyrin Ferrez and the Italian Augusto Girardet.

Authors in the collection include Pieter de Jode I, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Sebald Beham, Cornelis Visscher, Anthony van Dyck and Rembrandt's famous Hundred Guilder Print.

In addition to works by artists such as Jacques Callot and Claude Lorrain, the museum has two albums by Gustave Doré, with woodcuts produced to illustrate newspapers, as well as 80 lithographies by Honoré Daumier, imbued with political and social criticism, published in the 1830s by the historical magazine Le Charivari.

Most part of the pieces are of French origin, including 247 drawings by Grandjean de Montigny and other works by François Gérard, Honoré Daumier, Rosa Bonheur, Édouard Detaille, Henri-Edmond Cross and Jean-Louis Forain, etc.

Other European schools well represented in the collection include Italy (Bartolomeo Cesi, Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni, Corrado Giaquinto, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Pompeo Batoni), Portugal (Francisco de Holanda, Domingos Sequeira, Vieira Portuense, José Malhoa), Netherlands and Germany (Paulus Potter, Johann Moritz Rugendas), among others.

The collection includes works of both functional and artistic nature and its value lies in its capacity of revealing the life conditions, traditions, religiosity, recreation, aesthetic ideals, creativity and the human-nature relationship of the peoples of Brazil, as well as the regional differences concerning these issues.