Pinakothek Munich

"The Alte Pinakothek ('Old Picture Gallery') of Munich contains one of the great collections of European painting. That it does so is largely the result of centuries of collecting by the Wittelsbach dynasty that ruled Bavaria down to recent times; almost the entire contents of the museum, ranging from the 15h to the 19th century, were acquired by this family, and the museum itself was built on the orders of Ludwig I. and opened to the public in 1836.

The 128 superb full-colour photographs taken fot this book indicate the weighting as well as the quality of the collection. In particular there are the masterpieces of the 16th-century German school, in which the confident humanism of the Renaissance is fused with northern introspection and intensity of feeling: Durer's Christ-like Self-Portrait in a Fur Coat and The Four Apostles; the enigmatic, gracefully sensual nudes of Cranach; Grunewald's Mocking of Christ; and Altdorfer's Battle of Alexander, with its seething masses of warriors against a vast romantic landscape."