The Unterlinden Museum () is located in

Colmar Colmar (; ; or ) is a city and commune in the Haut-Rhin department and Alsace region of north-eastern France. The third-largest commune in Alsace (after Strasbourg and Mulhouse), it is the seat of the prefecture of the Haut-Rhin department ...

, in the

Alsace Alsace (, ; ) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,9 ...

region of France. The museum, housed in a 13th-century Dominican religious sisters'

convent A convent is an enclosed community of monks, nuns, friars or religious sisters. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The term is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican ...

and a 1906 former public baths building, is home to the

Isenheim Altarpiece The ''Isenheim Altarpiece'' is an altarpiece sculpted and painted by, respectively, the Germans Nikolaus Hagenauer, Nikolaus of Haguenau and Matthias Grünewald in 1512–1516. It is on display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, in Fra ...

by the

German Renaissance The German Renaissance, part of the Northern Renaissance, was a cultural and artistic movement that spread among German thinkers in the 15th and 16th centuries, which developed from the Italian Renaissance. Many areas of the arts and sciences ...

painter

Matthias Grünewald Matthias Grünewald ( – 31 August 1528; also known as Mathis Gothart Nithart) was a German Renaissance painter of religious works who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th cent ...

and features a large collection of local and international artworks and manufactured artifacts from prehistorical to contemporary times. It is a . With roughly 200,000 visitors per year, the museum is the most visited in Alsace.

History

The museum was established in 1849, the buildings (abandoned following the French Revolution) having been saved by the ''Societé Schongauer'' (founded in 1847 by Louis Hugot) and bequeathed to it by the municipality. The collection at first centered around a Roman

mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

found in Bergheim, Haut-Rhin, still displayed today, and plaster copies of antique sculptures on loan from the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

. In 1852, the focus of the collection shifted dramatically, when the Isenheim Altarpiece as well as most of the other large painted and/or sculpted altarpieces from former Colmar or Upper Rhenish churches,

abbey An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christians, Christian monks and nun ...

s and

monasteries A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which m ...

, were installed in the building. The museum opened its doors to the general public in the following year, 1853.Description of the museum on culture.gouv.fr
/ref> In the 1950s, and again in the 1980s, the need appeared for the museum, which had seen a steady growth of the number of its displayed artefacts in every domain, to gain more space by using available surface more appropriately, and was each time addressed as far as the classified character of the building in itself could allow. When that same need appeared again in the 2000s, the city of Colmar decided to add supplementary buildings. As the museum's official website used to state before the opening of the 2015 extension: "Today the museum covers a surface area of about 5,620 m², including exhibition spaces (4,000 m²), conservation, storage and other work areas (1,370 m²), and offices (250 m²)". Between 2009, and 2015, the adjacent,

Neo-Baroque Neo-Baroque may refer to: * Neo-Baroque music * Neo-Baroque painting, a painting style used by Christo Coetzee and others *Baroque Revival architecture * Neo-Baroque film *the Organ reform movement The Organ Reform Movement or ''Orgelbewegung'' ...

former baths building was transformed into an annex of the museum, connected to the old building by a series of underground exhibition rooms. A new building for temporary exhibitions was also added while the former cloister was once again thoroughly renovated and its interior spaces redistributed. The total area open to the public was thus enlarged to , at an official cost of 44 M€, although it appeared at the end of the year 2016, that the final cost was actually of 48,7 M€, a fact which infuriated Colmar's long-time mayor,

Gilbert Meyer Gilbert Meyer (26 December 1941 – 21 September 2020) was a French politician who served as a deputy in the National Assembly from 1993 to 2007, and Mayor of Colmar from 1995 to 4 July 2020. Biography Meyer was born on 26 December 1941 in Des ...

. The opening of the enlarged museum took place on 12 December 2015.

The collections

Famous above all for the

, it also displays a major collection of Upper Rhenish medieval and early Renaissance art, among which the Colmar native

Martin Schongauer Martin Schongauer (c. 1450–53, Colmar – 2 February 1491, Breisach), also known as Martin Schön ("Martin beautiful") or Hübsch Martin ("pretty Martin") by his contemporaries, was an Alsatian engraver and painter. He was the most important ...

occupies the most prominent place with several altarpieces and a large number of original drawings,

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ar ...

s and

woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...

s. Other famous names include

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer ( , ;; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, Old master prin ...

(engravings only),

Lucas Cranach the Elder Lucas Cranach the Elder ( ; – 16 October 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German ...

and

Hans Holbein the Elder Hans Holbein the Elder ( , ; ; – 1524) was a German painter. Life Holbein was born in the free imperial city of Augsburg (Germany), and died in Issenheim, Alsace (now France). He belonged to a celebrated family of painters; his father wa ...

as well as local painters Caspar Isenmann, Jost Haller ('' Tempelhof Altarpiece''), and Wilhelm Stetter. Most of the earliest paintings, however, are the work of anonymous German, Alsatian or Swiss masters, such as the Master of the Stauffenberg Altarpiece. Other sections displayed by the museum are : local and international archeology; medieval, Renaissance and baroque sculpture (religious as well as profane) and stained glass; weapons, furniture, music instruments and toys from the 14th to the 19th century; ancient, ornate wine barrels (a collection donated by Jean-Jacques Waltz in 1927); modern and contemporary art. Because of a general lack of space, this last collection, although very well furnished (works by

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

Jean Dubuffet Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (; 31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French Painting, painter and sculpture, sculptor of the School of Paris, École de Paris (School of Paris). His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" a ...

Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painting, painter, sculpture, sculptor, and film director, filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually ...

Serge Poliakoff Serge Poliakoff (January 8, 1900 – October 12, 1969) was a Russian-born French modernist painter belonging to the 'New' École de Paris ( Tachisme). Biography Serge Poliakoff was born in Moscow in 1900, the thirteenth of fourteen children. H ...

Georges Rouault Georges-Henri Rouault (; 27 May 1871, Paris - 13 February 1958, Paris) was a French painter, draughtsman, and printmaker, whose work is often associated with Fauvism and Expressionism. Childhood and education Rouault was born into a poor famil ...

Pierre Bonnard Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist gr ...

Robert Delaunay Robert Delaunay (; 12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist of the School of Paris movement; who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism (art), Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and g ...

Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and Printmaking, printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Alon ...

Maria Helena Vieira da Silva Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (13 June 1908 – 6 March 1992) was a Portuguese abstract painter. She was considered a leading member of the European abstract expressionism movement known as Art Informel. Her works feature complex interiors and c ...

and others) had only seldom been displayed in its entirety. The 2015 enlargement of the building by the Swiss architects

Herzog & de Meuron Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. is an international architecture firm headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, with additional offices in Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Munich, New York City, Paris, and San Francisco. Founded in 1978 by Jacques Herzog and ...

has explicitly been meant to address this problem.

Expansion

In order to renovate the museum and provide more space to its collections, in 2009, the Colmar municipality organized a design competition, and eventually selected the Swiss architects

to design the renovation project. The new venue, which almost doubles the floor area of the old Unterlinden museum, was inaugurated January 23, 2016 by the President of France

François Hollande François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande (; born 12 August 1954) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2012 to 2017. Before his presidency, he was First Secretary of the Socialist Party (France), First Secretary of th ...

Gallery

Musée Unterlinden (Colmar) (3).JPG, Main entrance of the museum File:Bains municipaux de Colmar-9841.jpg, New aisle of the museum, the former public baths Cloister of Unterlinden Museum, Colmar.jpg, The cloister Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar, mosaïque gallo-romaine de Bergheim, Haut-Rhin ( détail ).jpg,

Gallo-Roman Gallo-Roman culture was a consequence of the Romanization (cultural), Romanization of Gauls under the rule of the Roman Empire in Roman Gaul. It was characterized by the Gaulish adoption or adaptation of Roman culture, Roman culture, language ...

from Bergheim, Haut-Rhin (detail) Romanesque capital, Merman, Unterlinden Museum, Colmar.jpg, Romanesque

capital Capital and its variations may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** Capital region, a metropolitan region containing the capital ** List of national capitals * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Econom ...

with

merman A merman (: mermen; also merlad or merboy in youth), the male counterpart of the mythical female mermaid, is a legendary creature which is human from the waist up and fish-like from the waist down, but may assume normal human shape. Sometimes mer ...

Alsace, Haut-Rhin, Colmar, Musée d'Unterlinden, La Vierge de Niedermorschwihr, vers 1500.jpg, Upper Rhenish Master, Madonna with Child aka. ''Virgin of Niedermorschwihr'' Retable de Bergheim.jpg, Veit Wagner (attributed to), ''Bergheim altarpiece'' (detail) Gaspard Isenmann, L’Entrée du Christ à Jérusalem, La Dernière Cène.jpg, Caspar (or Gaspard) Isenmann, ''Entry into Jerusalem and Last Supper'' Musée Unterlinden - Martin Schongauer - retable d'Orlier - Annonciation (1472) (1).jpg,

, Orlier Altarpiece: ''Annunciation'' Hans Holbein l'Ancien, Portrait de femme.jpg,

, '' Portrait of a Woman'' Cranach, Lucas d. Ä. - Die Melancholie - 1532.jpg,

, '' Melancholy'' RuckersColmar-edit.jpg,

Ruckers The Ruckers family (variants: Ruckaert, Ruckaerts, Rucqueer, Rueckers, Ruekaerts, Ruijkers, Rukkers, Rycardt) were harpsichord and Virginals, virginal makers from the Southern Netherlands based in Antwerp in the 16th and 17th century. Their influe ...

harpsichord A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one ...

from

Flanders Flanders ( or ; ) is the Dutch language, Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, la ...

, built 1624 Musée Unterlinden - Théophile Schuler - Le Char de la Mort (1848) (2).jpg,

Théophile Schuler Jules Théophile Schuler (18 June 1821 – 26 January 1878) was a French painter and illustrator in the Romantic style. He gave his name to an art award established in 1938. Life The son of a pastor, he studied painting in his hometown, inta ...

, '' The Chariot of Death'' Monet - Das Tal der Creuse bei Sonnenuntergang.jpg,

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, ; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his ...

, '' The Valley of the Creuse, Sunset'' Emmanuel Benner, 1892 - Prehistoric hunt.jpg, Emmanuel Benner, '' A Family in the Stone Age'' Bonnard, Paysage normand.jpg,

, '' Normand Landscape'' Robert Delaunay Nature morte au perroquet.jpg,

, '' Still Life with a Parrot'' Colmar - Unterlinden Museum - Nu rose (Pink nude) 1930 by Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) - Paper (gouache), canvas (smoothed) 02.jpg,

Raoul Dufy Raoul Dufy (; 3 June 1877 – 23 March 1953) was a French painter associated with the Fauvist movement. He gained recognition for his vibrant and decorative style, which became popular in various forms, such as textile designs, and public build ...

, '' Pink Nude'' Colmar sun dial 1582.jpg, Sun dial (1582) Colmar commemorative cross 1762.jpg, Commemorative cross (1762)

References

Bibliography

*''Le musée Unterlinden – Guide des collections'', Magali Haas, Éditions Artlys, Paris, 2016. *''La collection d'art moderne – Le Musée Unterlinden de Alechinsky à Zack'', Frédérique Goerig-Hergott, Éditions Artlys, Paris, 2015. *''Le Musée Unterlinden de Colmar'', Sylvie Lecoq-Ramond & Pantxika Béguerie,

Éditions Albin Michel Éditions Albin Michel is a French publisher. In January 2019, the new President and CEO is Gilles Haéri. In January 2022, the director is Anna Pavlowitch, the daughter of Paul Pavlowitch. History It was founded in 1900 by Albin Michel. They ...

, Paris, 1991.

External links

*
Unterlinden Museum
on museesgrandest.org
Overview of the collection (Webmuseo)
a selection of 1,074 works
Overview of the collection (Joconde)
a different selection of 1,357 works {{Authority control