National Gallery’s rehang can’t fix its woman problem – but reveals fresh treasures ...Middle East

The Sainsbury Wing is open once again, after two years – though it feels longer – of steps, queues and poky side doors. Spruced up and remodelled, the National Gallery’s much maligned 90s car park-style extension is now its main entrance – spacious, airy, and newly sunlit, thanks to the sensible removal not only of dark glazing, but of some of the columns, which have been variously reduced in size, or taken out altogether.

Fewer steps, more lifts, and better facilities (including the chic Bar Giorgio, enticingly situated just inside the new entrance) will undoubtedly make it accessible and attractive to many more people. But it’s the rehang of more than 1,000 works of art  – up from just under 900, and representing about 40 per cent of the total collection – that is transformational.

Even so, unless you’re a confirmed habitué of the National Gallery you’ll  notice subtle improvements rather than dramatic changes . Even if the place is your second home, you’re not going to be challenged with any bizarre “re-imaginings” – though the unusual decision to display an early 16th-century triptych with its doors closed, revealing its monochrome outer panels, was causing minor consternation even on press day this week.

But while it remains reassuringly familiar, the collection has been newly and comprehensively considered, in ways that highlight what a remarkable treasure it is – those Piero della Francescas! all those Titians! – and invites visitors to look afresh at favourite paintings.

Mud Sun, a specially commissioned work by Richard Long, made in situ with quantities of Avon mud, offers a changed prospect at the top of the Sainsbury Wing stairs, but once you’re there, the basic scheme remains unchanged – turn left for medieval and early Renaissance paintings, and work your way eastwards to Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, and all the many other delights of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Grand vistas that unfold through the galleries are a reminder of what a marvellous adventure this is, the long axis between the Sainsbury Wing and the far side of the original building offering a distant, but impressive encounter across time and space between Raphael’s Mond Crucifixion, c.1502-3,and Stubbs’s Whistlejacket, 1762.

Dialogues like this are a notably successful feature of the rehang, which in the Sainsbury Wing emphasises the devotional purpose of much early western art by drawing out the ecclesiastical overtones of the architecture. A central “nave”, makes an arresting highlight, its pale walls suggestive of masonry, carefully lit to complete the effect.

Its imagined east-west axis affords another notable encounter, with Jacopo di Cione’s San Pier Maggiore Altarpiece, c.1370-1, its fragments newly installed in a magnificent frame made by the Gallery’s framing department, facing The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, 1475, by the Pollaiuolo brothers, from about 100 years later. Between the two, Segna di Bonaventura’s 14th-century painted crucifix is positioned authentically high up, evoking a chancel arch.

Smaller galleries, painted a dark grey and lit to suggest more intimate domestic spaces, make appropriate settings for more modestly scaled works. Among these, several portable altarpieces including Simon Marmion’s Fragments of Shutters from the St Bertin Altarpiece, about 1459, are now installed in glass cabinets, in which fantastically effective, yet discreet lighting affords a better appreciation of colour and detail, without disturbing the overall light levels. Taken off the walls, the winged altarpieces can be understood as three-dimensional objects, painted front and back.

There’s no quick fix for the glaring lack of painter women, but the curators have done their best with what they have, with the prominent display of new acquisitions, such as Eva Gonzalès’s The Full-Length Mirror, about 1869-70. Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782, is hung alongside the Rubens that inspired it, in the esteemed company of Titian and Rembrandt, and in long-distance dialogue with Tiepolo.

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Creating more space for visitors to circulate and gather at highlight paintings, such as Holbein’s The Ambassadors, 1533, has clearly been a priority – though a room of late Monets is rather a tight squeeze. It has, though, limited the scope for the sort of characterful, period hangs done at the National Portrait Gallery. Still, a number of themed rooms add extra interest, and in room 41, creative connections between the snow scenes of Monet, and umbrellas of Renoir, and Manet’s The Execution of Maximilian, about 1867-8, emphasise the impact of the 19th century revolution in blue pigments, on walls as dark as thunderclouds.

Seurat is a logical, if not obvious, climax to a room populated by Cézannes, and Van Gogh’s beloved Sunflowers and Chair are pragmatically placed on opposite sides of the room, though it’s an arrangement that serves to underline the iconic status of each. Other enjoyable conversations are between Constable and Turner, who remains close by the Claudes that he loved and admired so much.

More will become apparent with each visit. It’s free to all, as ever, and all the greater for it.

‘C C Land: The Wonder of Art’ at the National Gallery is free to enter and opens on 10 May

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