The paintings of the Museu de Alberto Sampaio constitute a valuable and an extremely diverse collection of specimens that, above all, document the artistic evolution and creative potential of Guimarães workshops and of their masters from the 15th to the 18th century. There are also some pieces of external origin, namely by the masters of Évora (Friar Carlos) and Lisbon (André Reinoso), not forgetting the isolated examples from 17th-century Northern Europe.
Most of the paintings come from extinct Guimarães institutions, in particular the Colegiada de Nossa Senhora da Oliveira, and other pieces come from convents of the city, namely, São Francisco, Santa Clara and Santa Marinha da Costa, as well as from the church of Carmo, the Igreja de São Miguel do Castelo and the church of São Cipriano de Tabuadelo.
Although the majority of pieces are representative of the regional pictorial production, there are also specimens of undeniably national stature that in themselves justify a visit, as is the case of the Triptych of the Lamentation, coming from the cloister of the Collegiate Church, the 16th-century panels by the workshop of Friar Carlos (coming from Santa Marinha da Costa), the painting by António Vaz (that belonged to the private chapel of the Dom Priors), the Pentecost with Donor from the Mannerist period or of the proto-baroque work by André Reinoso, among many interesting works.