The Gallery of Beauties () is a collection of 36 portraits of the most beautiful women from the nobility and bourgeoisie of Munich, Germany, painted between 1827 and 1850 (mostly by Joseph Karl Stieler, appointed court painter in 1820) and gathered by Ludwig I of Bavaria in the south pavilion of his Nymphenburg Palace in Munich. Two additional portraits were created by Friedrich Dürck, a student of Stieler. Its best-known works are the portraits of the shoemaker's daughter Helene Sedlmayr, the actress Charlotte von Hagn (revered by audiences in Munich, Berlin and Saint Petersburg) and the king's Irish mistresses Eliza Gilbert (Lola Montez) and Marianna Marquesa Florenzi. They include a Briton, a Greek, a Scot and an Israelite, along with relations of Ludwig's – the wife and daughter of Ludwig of Oettingen-Wallerstein were both painted, as was Ludwig I's daughter Princess Alexandra of Bavaria. All 36 women pictured were rewarded for modeling by Ludwig I. He took over their dowry, paid them an allowance or found them a job at court. He remained in active correspondence with some of them for years, while others only briefly crossed his life.
Previous collection
The idea of collecting paintings of beautiful women in a gallery was not an invention of Ludwig I of Bavaria, but seems to have originated in Italy. According to the earliest records, one of the Margraviate of Mantua is said to have owned such a collection in the 17th century. Something similar is reported from the courts of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria in (Hofgarten, Innsbruck), and Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, 8th Prince of Paliano in Carnesino Castle (near Como).
In England there are the Windsor Beauties, eleven of the ladies of King Charles II of England's court painted by Sir Peter Lely in the 1660s, and the Hampton Court Beauties, a later set by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
The gallery of originally 40 works that the Bavarian Electress Princess Henriette Adelaide of Savoy had created between 1650 and 1675 by her Munich court painter who had a much greater influence on Ludwig I. The gallery probably first hung in the old Schleissheim Castle and can now be found at least in part in the vestibule of the Cuvilliés Theater in Munich. The motifs are allegories of alleged ladies- in-waiting of Princess Henriette.
Not only Ludwig I, but also Princess Henriette's son, Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, was inspired by these works. In his gallery of beauties there were the most beautiful ladies of the French court from the times of King Louis XIV. The latter could also come from Princess Henriette Adelaide's gallery.
Elector August II of Saxony had several galleries with beauties in Pillnitz Castle: one with ladies-in-waiting of Mary II of England, created by students of Anthony van Dyck, one by Pietro Rotari (1707–1762), whom he invited to Dresden in 1750, and possibly another one with beautiful Polish women.
In all of the beauty galleries mentioned so far, there is no discernible relationship between the ruler and the subject. William VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel had Johann Heinrich Tischbein paint 28 beauties – 14 bourgeois ones for the first anteroom of Wilhelmsthal Palace, 14 noble ones for the second one, which is closer to him. These models were known to Wilhelm VIII; they were not portraits (or even copies of existing works) of ladies from other courts unknown to him, as had been common in previous beauty galleries.
Probably the largest gallery of beauties comes from Pietro Rotari. Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia commissioned the painter from Verona, who had been her court painter since 1756, to create a cabinet of fashions and graces. He was supposed to paint young women who represented the diversity of Russian people. As part of this commission, Rotari not only created 360 pictures of middle-class Russian women for the Tsarina, but also an additional 50, which she gave away to the Russian Academy of Art. The Tsarina's pictures were intended for Peterhof Palace. Today around 40 of the works can be found in Arkhangelskoye Palace near Moscow.
Origin
Before the Gallery of Beauties was created, there was a small scandal around 1817 because of two works by Joseph Karl Stieler. He had painted a portrait of Countess Rambaldi, one of the king's mistresses, for Ludwig I. This souvenir image, which allegorically depicts the Countess as a Madonna in order to anonymize her, it was hung next to a portrait of Ludwig I when he was a Crown Prince. However, the public recognized the motif and was outraged. The portrait of the crown prince, which Nathanael von Schlichtegroll described as a “masterpiece” in a letter to Georg Issel, was then removed.