Zeuxis Painting a Boy with Grapes Detail of the murals in the Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting Full size image
		Apelles Painting his Aphrodite Anadyomene Detail of the murals in the Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting Full size image

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After viewing the display of antiquities on the ground floor, visitors ascended the Main Staircase to the Picture Gallery on the upper floor. Before they saw the paintings of European artists, however, they found themselves in the Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting. Inspired by the wall paintings of ancient Pompeii, Herculaneum and Rome, the architect Klenze created here a decorative ensemble in which paintings with subjects combined with fanciful grotesques. This unique interior took the form of an illustrated history of ancient painting over a period of a thousand years, from the 7th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. The eighty paintings included here were created by the artist Georg Hiltensperger using the encaustic technique (wax-based paints on copper plates) that had been employed by the ancient artists. The pendentives in the vaults of the gallery contain 36 relief portraits of outstanding painters and sculptors, among which there is a likeness of Leo von Klenze himself.