Gretchen Hirschauer was a curator of Italian and Spanish Paintings at the National Gallery of Art until 2023. This collection spans the years from about 1250 to about 1800, from the Byzantine to Tiepolo and beyond. In her decades at the National Gallery, she curated many exhibitions with accompanying catalogues, including the Flowering of Florence: Botanical Art of the Medici (2002), Luis Meléndez: Master of the Spanish Still Life (2009), Piero di Cosimo: the Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence (2015), and Andrea del Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence (2019), and she co-curated Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice (2022–2023), and the same exhibition in Venice, Palazzo Ducale in 2023.