The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. Curator's Choice

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is the legacy of the art collector, circus entrepreneur and financier John Ringling and his wife Mable. At the heart of the Ringling's 66-acre Sarasota, Florida, estate is the Museum of Art, built by John Ringling to house his outstanding collections of European art. Featuring grand and often impressively scaled paintings by the Old Masters, including Rubens, Velazquez, Titian, Veronese, Gainsborough and Poussin, as well as antiquities, sculpture and decorative arts, the collection's scope and magnitude is an overwhelming achievement, not least because it was amassed in less than a dozen years. Curator Virginia Brilliant offers her own personal insight into the significance of her favourite works in one of the most important collections of Old Masters in the United States.