LONDON.- The National Gallery is the first ever gallery to make its paintings accessible through a downloadable iPhone application, making it possible to take a mini tour of the Gallery anywhere in the world.

The Gallery, in partnership with Antenna Audio and Apple Inc., has designed a new application for iPhones and iTouch devices that enables people to explore a sample of the collection while they’re on the move. Designed to appeal to art enthusiasts and fans of the Gallery, this application is the first of its kind to be released by a major gallery.

This Pentimento application, called Love Art, features 250 paintings from the collection along with around 200 minutes of audio and video content, including interviews with National Gallery Director Dr Nicholas Penny, dramatist Robin Brooks, artist Maggie Hambling and Girl with a Pearl Earring author Tracy Chevalier.

Making use of special iPhone features such as its large touch-screen, zoom, Rolodex and scrollable menus, Love Art offers a playful exploration of the collection, together with informative commentaries.

The paintings are showcased to the best advantage using high-resolution images on the iPhone’s excellent-quality screen. Due to a tactile interface the experience gained through this application is not only highly enjoyable, but also lets you zoom in to see details that are often missed.

Building on the collection’s universal themes such as love, passion, death and beauty, the Rolodex feature allows the random selection of a theme and provides access to stories about the paintings, told via video and audio commentary.

Love Art also boasts 12 thematic ‘galleries’, in which users can explore a greater selection of paintings grouped by popular themes or types such as portraits, cityscapes and religious paintings.

The application sits alongside the Gallery’s other audio content including its audio tours and popular monthly podcast series.

Dr Nicholas Penny said, ‘The National Gallery is delighted to be involved with Antenna in such an exciting and ground-breaking project. We look forward to working with Antenna in expanding the application further and reaching new publics.’

Sarah Dines, Managing Director, Antenna Audio said, ‘We're really proud to have created such a beautiful application that allows people to experience one of the greatest collections of masterpieces in the world in totally new and exciting ways. This application is a major step forward in our efforts to reach new audiences on new platforms’

Love Art can be downloaded from Apple’s online iTunes Store, one of the world’s leading sites for downloading audio content. For a short time only it is available free of charge.