Sulpiz Boisserée

Sulpiz Boiserée (2 August 1783 - 2 May 1854) was a German art collector and art historian. With his brother Melchior he formed a collection that ultimately formed the basis of that of the Alte Pinakothek. He played a key role in the completion of Cologne Cathedral.

Life Boisserée was born in Cologne on 2 August 1783,

In 1810 the brothers put their collection on public display in a palace in Heidelberg, attracting enthusiastic attention from Romantic circles. Schlegel was especially enthusiastic. 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). The brothers closed their museum in 1819. 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. In 1827 Georg von Dillis, the director of the royal collection of Ludwig I of Bavaria, bought the complete collection. Bertram and the Boisserée brothers followed it to Munich, and in 1835 Boisserée was appointed general curator of sculptural monuments in Bavaria, and the museum was finally opened as the Alte Pinakothek. He was able to interest Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia (later King Frederick William IV) in the project, and in 1817 the prince commissioned a report from the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

Last years The brothers eventually returned to the Rhineland from Munich, settling in Bonn in 1845. Boisserée died there on 2 May 1854, Melchior having predeceased him three years earlier.