BOISSEREE, bwirsrte. Stmettz (1783-1854). A German art critic and antiquary. Ile was born in Cologne. August. 2. 1783. A visit which he and his brother Melchior (1786-1851), along with their friend Bertram, paid to Paris in IS03, inspired the trio with the idea of collecting and preserving the scattered specimens of early Ger man painting. The realization of this idea be came the single object of their lives. After years of research they had gathered at Heidelberg in ISIO a collection of nearly 200 pictures. In ISIS it was taken to Stuttgart, where the collection was arranged chronologically in a spacious building. This disclosed the fact that in the Fourteenth Century Germany possessed an original school ot panel-painting, and that it was strongly modi fied by the Flemish toasters, especially the Van Eycks, in the Fifteenth Century, In 1827 the collection was sold to the King of Bavaria for 120,000 thalers and, except for about forty which were taken to Nuremberg (now in the Germanic Museum), they became the nucleus of the Royal Pinakothek in Munich. to which] place the broth
ers followed it. In I545 the two brothers removed to Bonn, and devoted all their energies to the study of the Cologne Cathedral. pleading for its completion. Sulpiz (lied May 2. 1854. !Melchior May 14. 1851. They published litInographic plates of the gallery, and Sit1piz, who widened his studies to include all German medifeval art, wrote several valuable works on the Colotme Cathedral, on the architecture of the Rhinelad, etc. Their collection became. a vain able source for the study of primitive German painting. Sulpiz Boisscri.e had considerable in fluence on Goethe's studies of German art. llis widow published a biography of her husl)and under the title, Sulpi7 lloisser('e (Stuttgart,