Munich’s Schack Gallery is one of the most important collections of nineteenth-century German art. It was founded in 1909 by Adolf Friedrich von Schack (1815–1894), whose purchases supported mostly younger artists who were either unknown or had received little attention: Anselm Feuerbach, Arnold Böcklin, Franz Lenbach, Moritz von Schwind, and Carl Spitzweg. Their paintings depict spheres faraway from the world of that time: myths and fairy tales; characters and themes from world literature; southern countries such as Italy, Greece, and Spain. With his collection, Schack, a German poet and European intellectual, shaped a unique visual cosmos that provides profound insight into the dreams and desires of the era.