Architecture
The Palacio de Bellas Artes, the current home of the Museum, is in the Neoclassical Second Empire style and the Baroque Revival style, strongly reinforced with Art Nouveau details and touches of metallic structural architecture. The central entrance is through a gigantically enlarged version of Borromini's false-perspective window reveals from Palazzo Barberini, which encloses a pedimented doorway entirely surrounded by glass, a Beaux-Arts touch. Through a broken pediment the squared cupola rises to the top. The internal layout and the facade are both modelled after the Petit Palais of Paris. The glass cupola that crowns the central hall was designed and manufactured in Belgium and brought to Chile in 1907. The approximate weight of the armour of the museum is 115,000 kg, of the glass of the cupola, 2,400 kg.
Architectonically, the floorplan of the museum is one of a central axis marked by the entrance and a grand hall with a staircase to the second floor. In the grand hall, above a balcony from the second floor, there is a carving in high relief which depicts two angels supporting a shield. They are located in the semivault above the heads of two Caryatids that arise from the balcony, carved by Antonio Coll y Pi.
- 2010 Chile earthquake
The building received substantial damage during the 2010 Chile earthquake.
Read more about this topic: Chilean National Museum Of Fine Arts
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