Alte Pinakothek

Leo von Klenze built the Alte Pinakothek in the 1830s as a purpose-made house for the Wittelsbach picture collection, and the plan he settled on, a spine of top-lit halls with small cabinet rooms alongside, was copied by galleries across Europe. Inside are German and European paintings from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century: Durer's self-portrait of 1500 and his Four Apostles, Cranach, Leonardo's Madonna of the Carnation, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt's Passion series, and one of the largest Rubens holdings anywhere, hung in a room built to take canvases the size of walls. The building carries its own history plainly, since Hans Dollgast's 1950s reconstruction patched the ruined south front in bare brick rather than disguising it.

History

The Wittelsbach collection was begun by Duke Wilhelm IV, who commissioned history paintings including Altdorfer's Battle of Alexander at Issus; Elector Maximilian I ordered four hunting scenes from Rubens in 1616, collected Dürer and obtained The Four Apostles in 1627. Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine, ordered Rubens's Big Last Judgment and received Raphael's Canigiani Holy Family as his wife's dowry, and Charles Theodore bought Rembrandt's Holy Family; after the union of Bavaria and the Palatinate in 1777 the galleries of Mannheim, Düsseldorf and Zweibrücken came to Munich. With secularisation many paintings from churches and monasteries passed to the state, and King Ludwig I bought the Boisserée collection of 216 Old German and Old Dutch masters in 1827 and the Wallerstein collection of 219 paintings in 1828; the first catalogue was issued by Johann Georg von Dillis in 1838 (Wikipedia, Alte Pinakothek).

What's there

• Durer's Self-Portrait of 1500 - the frontal, symmetrical panel that fixed the artist's reputation.
• The Rubens hall - one of the largest holdings of his work anywhere, including the vast Last Judgement.
• Leonardo's Madonna of the Carnation - a small early panel that most visitors walk straight past.
• The Dollgast brickwork - the 1950s repair left as a visible seam across the south facade.

When to go

Open year round and closed on Mondays; the Kunstareal is emptiest on weekday mornings, when the Rubens hall can be almost yours. Sundays are busier because admission across the Bavarian state galleries drops to a token price. One late evening a week suits a slower second pass, and the quarter's other museums sit within a five-minute walk.

Before you go

It is a picture gallery and nothing else: no interactives, little staging, and long rooms of religious panels that blur if you rush. English labelling is thin beyond the famous works. Loans and conservation mean a named painting can be absent without warning. The rebuilt interior is plain to the point of austerity and seating is scarce.

Nearby

The Pinakothek der Moderne and Brandhorst next door, the Glyptothek on Konigsplatz and the Englischer Garten.

Key facts