A pinacotheca (Latin borrowing from = + ) was a picture gallery in either

ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

. The name is specifically used for the building containing pictures which formed the left wing of the Propylaea on the Acropolis at Athens, Greece. Though Pausanias speaks of the pictures "which time had not effaced", Pausanias, ''Description of Greece''
book I, chapter xxii, page 31, section 6
translated by J. G. Frazer (1898) which seems to point to

fresco painting Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes ...

, the fact that there is no trace of preparation for

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

on the walls implies that the paintings were

easel An easel is an upright support used for displaying and/or fixing something resting upon it, at an angle of about 20° to the vertical. In particular, painters traditionally use an easel to support a painting while they work on it, normally stan ...

pictures. The Romans adopted the term for the room in a private house containing pictures, statues, and other works of art. In the modern world the word is often used as a name for a public

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

concentrating on paintings, mostly in Italy (as "Pinacoteca"), such as the Pinacoteca Vaticana of the

Vatican Museums The Vatican Museums (; ) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the best-known Roman sculptures and ...

(which is usually meant when the plain word is used), the

Pinacoteca di Brera The Pinacoteca di Brera ("Brera Art Gallery") is the main public gallery for paintings in Milan, Italy. It contains one of the foremost collections of Italian paintings from the 13th to the 20th century, an outgrowth of the cultural program of ...

in Milan (more often "the Brera" informally), the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli built on the roof of the former

Lingotto Lingotto is a building complex on Via Nizza in Turin, Italy. It once housed a car factory built by Italian automotive company Fiat and today houses the administrative headquarters of the manufacturer and a multipurpose centre projected by arc ...

Fiat factory in Turin, Italy, with others in

Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...

and

Siena Siena ( , ; traditionally spelled Sienna in English; ) is a city in Tuscany, in central Italy, and the capital of the province of Siena. It is the twelfth most populated city in the region by number of inhabitants, with a population of 52,991 ...

. In Brazil, there is the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. In Paris, the Pinacothèque de Paris. In Munich the three main galleries are called the

Alte Pinakothek The Alte Pinakothek (, ''Old Pinakothek'') is an art museum located in the Kunstareal area in Munich, Germany. It is one of the oldest galleries in the world and houses a significant collection of Old Master paintings. The name Alte (Old) Pin ...

(

old master In art history, "Old Master" (or "old master")Old Masters De ...

s),

Neue Pinakothek The Neue Pinakothek (, ''New Pinacotheca'') is an art museum in Munich, Germany. Its focus is European Art of the 18th and 19th centuries, and it is one of the most important museums of art of the nineteenth century in the world. Together with t ...

(19th century) and

Pinakothek der Moderne The Pinakothek der Moderne (, '' Pinakothek of the Modern'') is a modern art museum, situated in central Munich's '' Kunstareal''. The building Designed by German architect Stephan Braunfels, the Pinakothek der Moderne was inaugurated in Se ...

. The

Pinacotheca, Melbourne Pinacotheca was a gallery in Melbourne, Australia. Established in 1967 by Bruce Pollard, it was ideologically committed to the avant-garde and represented a new generation of artists interested in post-object, conceptual and other non-tradition ...

, was a gallery for avant-garde art from 1967 to 2002. At

Hallbergmoos Hallbergmoos is a Municipalities of Germany, municipality in the district of Freising (district), Freising in Bavaria in Germany. The Isar River flows west of the town. The town is directly south-west of Munich Airport Economy Augsburg Airways, a ...

, near Munich Airport, there was the Pinakothek Hallbergmoos (20th and 21st century) between 2010 and 2014.

References

* Ancient Greek painting Roman Empire art Art museums and galleries in Greece Acropolis of Athens Types of art museums and galleries Defunct art museums and galleries Rooms History of museums {{AncientGreek-lang-stub

See also

References