620 The Pinacotheca of Munich. 



Munich Gallery and the Palace of Schleisheim were tog-ether insuf- 

 ficiently large to contain them. Provincial galleries have been 

 therefore formed to admit the residue of these pictures: Augsburg 

 and Nuremberg already possess galleries ; and measures are in 

 course of being taken to establish galleries in other principal towns. 

 It would be well, if England would imitate the bright example of Ba- 

 varia. But there is a fatal lethargy with respect to the arts too pre- 

 valent among the parties who ought to lead the national taste : 

 otherwise the National Gallery would not be confined to its wretched 

 quota of a hundred and twenty pictures, while Munich has its thirteen 

 hundred, the Louvre about fourteen hundred, and the Berlin gallery, 

 (which began to be formed only in 1822,) possesses between seven and 

 eight hundred. That England has the means of forming a splendid 

 gallery merely by collecting into one body the chefs d'ceuvre on the' 

 walls of the royal palaces, cannot be doubted : but has the learned 

 Mr. Wilkins made room for them '? We fear not ; but revenons a 

 nos moutons. 



The present king, Louis Charles, whose accession took place in 

 1825, was scarcely on the throne before he put in practice a plan that 

 he had often meditated before namely, of presenting Munich with a 

 depository worthy of its splendid artistical riches. He laid the first 

 stone of the PINACOTHECA, with his own handson the7th of April, 1826. 

 This splendid edifice, one monument only of the sovereign's good 

 taste and patriotism among many others, such as the Glyptotheca, the 

 Walhalla, and many other noble structures, has at length been 

 opened to the public ; and our English travellers will be enabled to 

 enjoy a treat, such as hitherto could not have been enjoyed out of 

 Italy. To fill the spacious saloons of this gallery, a selection was 

 made from several thousand pictures which had been accumulated at 

 Munich, and many hundreds of which were given by the king him- 

 self : and only those were picked out, which from their real excel- 

 lence and their peculiar character might be considered as true types 

 of individual genius and really characteristic of the school to which 

 they respectively belong. Thirteen hundred of the most remarkable 

 chefs d'ceuvre of all the schools of Europe are now deposited in the 

 Pinacotheca. The remainder have been hung in the gallery at 

 Schleisheim or sent into the provincial towns. 



A good light, a systematic arrangement, and facility for study, may 

 be stated to be the indispensable requisites in the projection of a gal- 

 lery of Arts. Without the first such a building would be entirely 

 useless : the classification into schools is universally acknowledged 

 as indispensable to the progress of the student ; and we may safely 

 affirm that rooms set apart and adapted for study and copying are 

 equally necessary, if at least such ft gallery be considered in any re- 

 spect as a school of art. It is not at all too much to say, even in the 

 face of Mr.Wilkins ? s professional disapproval, that Baron Von Klenze 

 has perfectly accomplished all the real and essential objects that he 

 contemplated as well as the merely adventitious points of ^architectural 

 decoration.* The Pinacotheca, which is intended to receive only 



* Baron Von Klenze, who, by the way, was the architect of the Glyptotheca as well 

 as of the Pinacotheca, has proved himself to be a much more skilful manager of his re- 



