The fresco gallery of the National Museum in Belgrade is unique in its function and content, collecting, preserving and presenting in one place the highest level of Serbian medieval and Byzantine art in one place. The Gallery preserves copies of frescoes and sculptures that testify about the unique and significant art of wall painting, iconography, miniature painting and architecture created on the territory of medieval Serbia and neighboring countries of the Balkans, and many copies come from monuments that are today destroyed or endangered.
The first initiative for copying frescoes in order to establish the Fresco Museum, as well as organizing exhibitions abroad, was initiated by the FNRJ Committee for Culture and Art in 1947. The initiative resulted in the great exhibition of Yugoslav medieval art, in 1950, at the Chaillot Palace in Paris. 160 copies of frescoes and 105 sculptures of sculpture were made for the setting. After the completion of the exhibition and the return of the exhibits to the country, on February 1, 1953, Fresco Gallery was opened as the second museum of its kind in the world. The basic copy fund was significantly increased, with an additional 441 copy, its first director, Milan Kashanin, who also conceived the first, basic setting of the Gallery. During the following decades, the Fresco Gallery dedicated itself to further making copies, presenting and researching works belonging to the Byzantine tradition, among which the most numerous are the Serbian medieval arts. Since 1962, the Gallery also has a painting and sculpture studio. The fresco gallery was joined by the National Museum in Belgrade in 1973.
Today, the Gallery has a rich collection of about 1,300 copies of frescoes of monuments from the 11th to the mid 15th century, as well as individual copies of icons and miniatures from the same period. The collection also contains about 300 casts of medieval monumental sculptures and epigraphic monuments. All copies of the work are academic artists specialized in the field. Their dimensions, the way they are made, and the damage, are completely true to the original.
The dedicated building for the Fresco Gallery was built in 1952 on the land that the Jewish municipality gave to the city of Belgrade, provided that the future object is intended for culture. At that point once was the synagogue Beth Israel, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1944.
