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THE PINACOTHECA OF MUNICH. 



To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 



DEAR MR. EDITOR, I beg to present to you a paper descriptive of 

 a very celebrated picture gallery lately opened in the capital of Ba- 

 varia, and I shall feel myself amply repaid for the trouble of com- 

 mitting my observations to paper, if they shall be found interesting by 

 even a few of your numerous readers. That they will interest some 

 of them, I would fain think, especially as they appear within one 

 short month of the opening of our own National Gallery, and just at 

 the season when the restless sight-seeing portion of our countrymen 

 are busy dressing their wings for their summer migration. 



With respect to what I have said of Mr. Wilkins, I am as ready as 

 any one to give him the honour due to his unquestionable talent ; but 

 I cannot avoid the expression of my deep disappointment at his failure 

 in Trafalgar Square. Either at Berlin or Munich he might, if 

 he had so pleased, have acquired much valuable knowledge, that 

 would have saved him from the disgrace of a failure and would have 

 ensured for us (he possession of a Gallery equally creditable to the ar- 

 chitect and to the country. 



I shall only add that my facts may be fully depended on, inasmuch 

 as they are founded not only on personal observation, but are con- 

 firmed by the authority of the best native critics; and I beg to sub- 

 scribe myself, 



Your's most faithfully, 



May 20, 1837. IL VIAGGIATORE. 



It is well known to all the lovers of the Fine Arts, that the royal 

 family of Bavaria has been long distinguished in Europe for its en- 

 lightened love and patronage of art and of its professors and students. 

 The galleries, which formerly gave celebrity to Dusseldorf, Mannheim, 

 Deux-Ponts, Schleisheim, as well as the old Munich collection, owe 

 their existence entirely to the reigning family. The Dusseldorf gal- 

 lery was founded by the Elector-Palatine John William, that of 

 Mannheim by Charles Theodore, and that at Deux-Ponts by the Duke 

 Charles. The collections in the Capital and at the superb palace of 

 Schleisheim were created and gradually enlarged by the Dukes Al- 

 bert V. and William V. and by the Electors Maximilian I. and Max- 

 imilian Emmanuel. It was at the commencement of the present cen- 

 tury, that Maximilian Joseph, who united in his own person the two 

 Electorates of Bavaria and the Palatinate together with the Duchy of 

 Deux-Ponts and was afterwards raised by Napoleon to kingly power 

 in compliance with the terms of the Peace of Presberg in 1805, con- 

 ceived the notion of collecting within the precincts of the capital in 

 one grand gallery the scattered wealth which the virtb and good taste 

 of his ancestors had deposited in different parts of his kingdom. The 

 number of these pictures, however, was found to be so great, that the 



