The Building
King Ludwig I of Bavaria (1825–1848) ordered Leo von Klenze to erect a new building for the gallery for the Wittelsbach collection in 1826. The museum galleries were designed to display Rubens's "Last Judgment" (1617), one of the largest canvasses ever painted. Very modern in its day, the building became exemplary for museum buildings in Germany and all of Europe after its inauguration in 1836, and thus became a model for new galleries in Rome, St Petersburg, Brussels and Kassel.
The museum building was severely damaged by bombing in World War II but was reconstructed and reopened to the public in the late 1950s. The ornate, pre-war interior was not restored.
Read more about this topic: Alte Pinakothek
Famous quotes containing the word building:
“People do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like our silkworms, and is suffocated in it: a mouse in a pitch barrel.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love.... It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigour of the earlier world?”
—William Morris (1834–1896)