The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture. The creation of this website is one of the results of a broader project started in 1996 with the following basic objectives:

• working out techniques for the efficient use of the Internet in visual education (in elementary and middle schools as well as in home schooling) and evaluate these techniques by creating an on-line educational tool in art history,
• working out experimentally a new multimedia "genre" (a composite of picture exhibition, catalogue, essays, database, meeting place, art forum, etc.) best suitable for presenting and popularising classical visual art on the Internet.

We intend to create a collection as comprehensive as possible. Due to limited resources, this cannot be done for all periods of art history, therefore the scope of the collection is focused to works of art created in the time period from the 12th up to mid-19th centuries. The extension of this period is not planned, it is beyond our means.