1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pinacotheca

PINACOTHECA, a picture-gallery (Gr. πινακοθήκη, from πίναξ, a tablet or picture). The name is especially given to the building containing pictures which formed the left wing of the Propylaea on the Acropolis at Athens. Though Pausanias (Bk. II., xxii. 6) speaks of the pictures “ which time had not effaced," which seems to point to fresco painting, the fact that there is no trace of any preparation for stucco on the walls rather shows that the paintings were easel pictures (J. G. Frazer, Pausanias’s Description of Greece, 1898, ii. 252). The Romans adopted the term for the room in a private house containing pictures, statues, and other works of art. It is used for a public gallery on the continent of Europe, as at Bologna and Turin. At Munich there are two galleries known as the Old and New Pinakothek.