Berlin State Museums in the context of "Splendor Solis"

Max Jakob Friedländer (5 July 1867 in Berlin – 11 October 1958 in Amsterdam) was a German-Jewish museum curator and art historian. He was a specialist in Early Netherlandish painting and the Northern Renaissance, who volunteered at the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin in 1891 under Friedrich Lippmann. On Lippmann's recommendation, Wilhelm von Bode took him on as his assistant in 1896 for the paintings division. He was appointed deputy director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum (then containing the Berlin State Museums' old master paintings and sculpture) under Bode in 1904 and became director himself from 1924 to 1932, working on his history From Van Eyck to Bruegel and the 14-volume (printed in 16, with supplements) survey Early Netherlandish Painting. In 1933 he was dismissed as a "non-Aryan" and in 1939 had to move to Amsterdam because he was Jewish. He attained the rank and title of geheimrat (privy councillor) under the German Empire. He also donated several works to the collection and worked in the art trade as an advisor, to Hermann Göring among others.

He invented the style term Antwerp Mannerism, and created many of the notnames for undocumented artists in this style, and others of the period.

The Sargon Stele was found in the autumn of 1845 in Cyprus on the site of the former city-kingdom of Kition, in present-day Larnaca to the west of the old harbour of Kition in the archaeological site of Bamboula. The language on the stele is Assyrian Akkadian.

The stele was placed there during the time Sargon II (r. 722–705 BC) ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire (935–605 BC). It was offered for sale to the British Museum, which bid 20 £. Ludwig Ross offered 50 £ for the stele and it was shipped to a museum in Berlin where it remains at the Berlin State Museums. Together with the stele was found a gilded silver plakette, that today is located at the Louvre. A replica of the stele is on display in the Larnaca District Museum.

The Kupferstichkabinett, or Museum of Prints and Drawings, is a prints museum in Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Berlin State Museums, and is located in the Kulturforum on Potsdamer Platz. It is the largest museum of graphic art in Germany, with more than 500,000 prints and around 110,000 individual works on paper (drawings, pastels, watercolours, oil sketches).

The Gemäldegalerie (German pronunciation: [ɡəˈmɛːldəɡaləˌʁiː], lit. 'Painting Gallery') is an art museum in Berlin, Germany, and the museum where the main selection of paintings belonging to the Berlin State Museums (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) is displayed. It was first opened in 1830, and the current building was completed in 1998. It is located in the Kulturforum museum district west of Potsdamer Platz.

It holds one of the world's leading collections of European paintings from the 13th to the 18th centuries. Its collection includes masterpieces from such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Holbein, Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck, Raphael, Botticelli, Titian, Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, David Teniers the Younger, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds and Antonio Viviani.

Doge Leonardo Loredan with Four Sons, also Portrait of the Loredan Family (Italian: Ritratto della famiglia Loredano), is a large tempera-on-poplar painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini depicting the noble Loredan family of Venice, namely Leonardo Loredan, Doge of Venice and his four sons, Lorenzo, Girolamo, Alvise, and Bernardo. It was painted in 1507 and is now on display at the Gemäldegalerie, part of the Berlin State Museums.

The Humboldt Forum is a museum dedicated to human history, art and culture, located in the Berlin Palace on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin. It is named in honour of the Prussian scholars Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt. Considered the "German equivalent" of the British Museum, the Humboldt Forum houses the non-European collections of the Berlin State Museums, temporary exhibitions and public events. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it opened digitally on 16 December 2020 and became accessible to the general public on 20 July 2021. In 2023, the Humboldt Forum recorded approximately 1.7 million entries, counted by sensors at the building's entrances. The foundation described the institution as the most visited museum in Germany. However, this figure includes all persons entering the building, including visitors to restaurants, shops, and events, and differs from international standards that typically count only museum visitors. Consequently, the Humboldt Forum does not appear in international museum attendance rankings such as those published by The Art Newspaper.

The Museum of Asian Art (German: Museum für Asiatische Kunst) has been a part of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin since 2020. Before its relocation, the museum was sited in the neighborhood of the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin, Germany. It is one of the Berlin State Museums and funded by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

The museum houses about 20,000 Asian artifacts, making it one of the largest museums of ancient Asian art in the world. The museum is located in the same building as the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. Its geographic reach covers regions in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Autonomous Region of Tibet and Xinjiang of the People's Republic of China, the Southeast Asian countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and also the Indonesian Islands or archipelago.