This master’s thesis presents the donation of Ivan Ružić to the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts which took place in 1892. It firstly brings forth a detailed overview of Ružić’s life, highlighting the development of his political career and the period leading up to the donation during which he resided in Bjelovar. The thesis also introduces details pertaining to his acquisition of the artwork which occurred in the winter between 1891 and 1892 in Rome, as well as the social and historical background of the donation. The procurement of the artwork is considered within the wider context of the late nineteenth-century art market in Rome and the resulting problems which arise in provenance research of specific art objects. The donation process is analysed and presented based on the research of archival sources, while the artwork’s monetary value is discussed and contextualized using early twentieth-century newspaper articles and other contemporaneous sources. The art-historical interpretation of the donation is divided into two chapters dedicated to religious and profane paintings, which consist of individual analyses of each artwork. A few of the paintings depicting elaborate iconographic motifs are interpreted with an emphasis on their iconography, two copies are analysed in comparison to the corresponding originals and another pair of paintings are considered in relation to newly found, compositionally matching prints. Other paintings are researched in view of specific stylistic periods, painterly circles and past as well as current attributions. Various markings that were discovered on the backs of the paintings are interpreted and comparatively analysed in the thesis. The final chapter presents basic information about works which were originally donated by Ružić to the Strossmayer Gallery, but were transferred to other Zagreb museums during the course of the twentieth century. Museum catalogues and other scholarly sources published by the Strossmayer Gallery from 1892 up until the present day were used as a point of departure for the research for this thesis.