Sulpiz Boisserée

[2] In 1804, alarmed by the nationalisation of church property and its destruction through sales, the Boisserée brothers began to collect medieval art, motivated as much by the desire to save it as to possess it.

[2] Boisserée developed a new theory of the history of German painting, rejecting the idea that it had evolved gradually from crude beginnings; he proposed instead that a refined medieval style, ultimately derived from Byzantine prototypes had flourished, until the art was revolutionised by Jan van Eyck.

Goethe, who also visited the collection was, with his classical sympathies, more reserved, although he was still prepared to write a preface for Boisserée's essay Altdeutsche Baukunst (1817).

Boisserée wrote a catalogue of the collection, commissioning Johann Nepomuk Strixner to document the works in a series of lithographs, which were published between 1821 and 1840.

[2] The Boisserée collection, still in the Alte Pinakothek, includes the "Columba altarpiece" (1455) by Rogier van der Weyden[2] (which Boisserée believed to be by van Eyck),[3] Cardinal Charles of Bourbon, Archbishop of Lyon by the Master of Moulins, the Seven Joys of the Virgin (1480) by Hans Memling, and the "Pearl of Brabant" (1465) by Dieric Bouts the elder.