It was built by the plans of Albert Schickedanz and Fülöp Herzog in an eclectic-neoclassical style [further explanation needed] , between 1900 and 1906.

The collection is made up of older additions such as those from Buda Castle, the Esterházy and Zichy estates, as well as donations from individual collectors.

[citation needed] It comprises a number of collections bought together by Hungarian Egyptologist, Eduard Mahler, in the 1930s.

The collection is split up into Italian, German, Dutch, Flemish, French, English and Spanish art.

The most important works include Maso di Banco's Coronation of the Virgin, Sassetta's Saint Thomas Aquinas at Prayer, Domenico Ghirlandaio's Saint Stephen Martyr, Bernardo Bellotto's The Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Gentile Bellini's Portrait of Caterina Cornaro, Giorgione's Portrait of a Young Man, Raphael's Esterhazy Madonna, Giambattista Pittoni's St Elizabeth Distributing Alms, three works by Corrado Giaquinto, Allegory of Painting, The Angel Annunciant and Moses receiving the Laws, Correggio's Madonna and Child with an Angel, three works by Sebastiano del Piombo, Bronzino's Adoration of the Shepherds as well as his Venus, Cupid and Jealousy, Romanino's Doge Agostino Barbarigo Handing over a Banner to Niccolo Orsini, Titian's Portrait of Doge Marcantonio Trevisani, Tintoretto's Supper at Emmaus, Tiepolo's St James the Greater in the Battle of Clavijo, Dürer's Portrait of a Young Man, Bernard van Orley's Portrait of Emperor Charles V, eight pictures by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Pieter Bruegel the Elder's St John the Baptist Preaching, Rubens's Mucius Scaevola Before Porsenna, Murillo's The Christ Child Distributing Bread to Pilgrims, Maarten van Heemskerck's Lamentation, two portraits by Frans Hals, and a collection of works by Spanish masters including El Greco, Velázquez and Goya.

From the latter are representatives of the Romantic period (Eugène Delacroix), the Barbizon school (Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet) and Impressionism (Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec).

[2] In September 2011, Secretary of State for Culture Géza Szőcs officially announced plans to build a new structure along Andrássy út close to City Park and near the existing Budapest Museum of Fine Arts and Budapest Art Hall (Műcsarnok).

[4] In early December 2011, Ferenc Csák, director of the Hungarian National Gallery since 2010 and critical of the proposed merger of the gallery with the Museum of Fine Arts, called the merge process "[v]ery unprofessional, anti–democratic and short–sighted" and announced that he would resign at the end of 2011.