Martin von Wagner Museum

[1] Franz Joseph Fröhlich, a musicologist and lecturer of the arts at the University of Würzburg assembled the collection as it was formerly know Ästhetisches Attribut in 1832 with a purchase budget by the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior.

Wagner was also active as an archaeologist built up this large collection while working as artistic agent for the Bavarian King Ludwig I of Bavaria.

Important works such as the Head of a Centaur from the Parthenon or the Madonna del Bambino Vispo were now included in the “Aesthetic Attribute” inventory, along with thousands of valuable hand drawings and copperplate engravings, mainly by Italian masters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

The older and the newer departments of the Martin von Wagner Museum are headed by two habilitated scientists who are supported by an advisory board consisting of several museum-related specialists from the University of Würzburg and a total of four external members, who are usually heads of larger museum collections.

[1] The art gallery contains German, Dutch and Italian paintings from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, including pictures by Hans Leonhard Schäufelein, Bartholomäus Spranger, Pieter Claesz, Luca Giordano, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Friedrich Overbeck, Carl Rottmann, Franz von Lenbach, Max Liebermann, August von Brandis and Hans Purrmann.