Painting

Senator Friedrich Gwinner founded Frankfurt's art historiography with his work "Kunst und Künstler in Frankfurt am Main vom dreizehnten Jahrhundert bis zur Eröffnung des Städel'schen Kunstinstituts", published in 1862. This was also a prerequisite for the inclusion of the city's art holdings in a broad-based cultural-historical presentation of the Historical Museum, which opened its doors to visitors for the first time in 1878.

The museum's art collections include paintings, sculptures and stained glass as well as an extensive graphic art collection. The basis of the painting collection, which comprises around 3,200 works, is formed by the donations of Prince Primate Carl von Dalberg (1744-1817) to the museum society (1808), the heirs of the master confectioner Johann Valentin Prehn (1749-1821) and the merchant Johann Georg Christian Daems (1774-1856) to the City of Frankfurt (1839 and 1845 respectively).

The Frankfurt collectors

Dalberg had acquired paintings from secularized Frankfurt churches and monasteries, including works by Albrecht Dürer, Mathias Grünewald, Hans Baldung Grien, Hans Holbein the Elder and the Frankfurt Master. At the same time, Dalberg also acquired works by contemporary Frankfurt artists. Prehn's Cabinet of Paintings, a unique example of a bourgeois art collection, brings together over 800 miniature paintings in 32 folding boxes - including the famous "Garden of Paradise" by an Upper Rhine master, created around 1410/20 (on permanent loan to the Städel) - and over 30 large-format paintings, mainly by German and Dutch artists of the 17th and 18th centuries. The more than 200 paintings in the Daems Collection are also mainly by German - especially Frankfurt - and Dutch artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, with a focus on landscape painting.

Frankfurt Masters

Frankfurt painting of the 17th century is represented in the HMF collection by works by Adam Elsheimer and others. The 18th century is represented by works by members of the Schütz family and from the 19th century we have numerous works by the Kronberg School of painting. The paintings of justice from the town hall and the paintings in the Kaisersaal in the Römer, for which the HMF is also responsible, are of great importance for the self-image of the city of Frankfurt and its patriciate. The smaller, historically interesting collections include Frankfurt marksmen's targets from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Stained glass

The collection of stained glass comprises 120 objects, most of which come from Frankfurt churches and monasteries. In addition to ecclesiastical stained glass, such as the figural panes from the cathedral from the mid-13th century, there are also a few from secular municipal buildings. There are also panes that Frankfurt citizens collected out of local historical interest; these include the coat of arms panes of the Heller family from the beginning of the 16th century and butchers' guild panes from the end of the 14th century as well as a collection of Swiss coat of arms panes owned by Schnyder von Wartensee.