Melchior Boisserée
{{Short description|German art collector}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2023}}
File:Melchior Boisserée 1840.jpg
Melchior Boisserée (1786 – 1851) was a German art collector.
Life
Boiserée was born at Cologne in 1786. In the wake of the French occupation and the closure of many churches, he undertook, in conjunction with his brother, Sulpice Boisserée, and Johann Baptist Bertram, the formation of a collection of pictures{{harvnb|Bryan|1886}} by early German and Netherlandish painters,{{cite web|title=Adoration of the Magi, 1830|url=http://www.thorvaldsensmuseum.dk/en/collections/work/E1280|publisher=Thorvaldsens Museum|accessdate=25 October 2012}} to which the three devoted twenty years' labour and the bulk of their fortunes. The most important work in their collection, bought in 1808, was the Adoration of the Magi part of the St Columba Altarpiece, which the brothers believed to be by Jan van Eyck although it is now attributed to Rogier van der Weyden.
In 1819 they moved their collection from Heidelberg to Stuttgart, and in 1827 sold the pictures, with a few exceptions which are in the chapel of St. Maurice at Nuremberg, to the King of Bavaria, for 120,000 thalers (£18,000); they are now in the Pinakothek at Munich. The collection was recorded in a series of 117 lithographs by the Danish printmaker Johann Nepomuk Strixner, published between 1821 and 1840 in 39 parts.{{cite web|title=Galerie des Frères Boisserée / St Antony, Pope Cornelius and Mary Magdalene|url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectid=1452394&partid=1&output=People%2F!!%2FOR%2F!!%2F78949%2F!%2F78949-1-7%2F!%2FRepresentation+of+Pope+Cornelius+%28St+Cornelius%29%2F!%2F%2F!!%2F%2F!!!%2F&orig=%2Fresearch%2Fsearch_the_collection_database%2Fadvanced_search.aspx¤tPage=1&numpages=10|publisher=British Museum|accessdate=25 October 2012}}
Boisserée was the inventor of a new and simple method of painting on glass by means of the brush alone, and employed it for the reproduction of the best works in his collection, and of some chefs-d'oeuvre of the Italian school which are now at Bonn.
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
Sources
- {{Bryan (3rd edition)|title=Boisseree, Melchior |volume=1}}
External links
{{Commons category}}
- [http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/boissereem.htm Melchior Boisserée in the Dictionary of Art Historians]
- [https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_results.aspx?orig=%2Fresearch%2Fsearch_the_collection_database.aspx&searchText=Galerie+des+Fr%C3%A8res+Boisser%C3%A9e+&x=4&y=9&fromDate=&fromadbc=ad&toDate=&toadbc=ad Strixner's lithographs after Boisserée's collection]
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Category:19th-century German painters
Category:19th-century German male artists
Category:German art collectors
Category:19th-century art collectors
Category:German male non-fiction writers
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