The museum's collection counts about five hundred European paintings, being one of the largest and most important collections of European art in Romania. The items originate primarily from a private collection formed in the latter half of the nineteenth century: that of the Ormós Zsigmond (1813-1894).

Many prestigious names for the different epochs are mentioned in the Catalogue, with works certainly created by, or attributed to such Italian painters as Donato Veneziano, Agostino Carracci, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Flemish and Dutch painters as Frans Pourbus the Younger, Jan Fyt, Philips Wouwerman, as well as the German, Austrian, Hungarian and French painters from the nineteenth century.