News
Ceiling painting: feast for the senses under Baroque dome
7 Jul 2026
A team led by LMU art historian Stephan Hoppe is using state-of-the-art technologies and AI to safeguard the cultural heritage of ceiling paintings.
Before their discovery, the two canvases had been languishing in storage at the Alte Pinakothek art museum in Munich. Up close, they are not particularly impressive – the colors appear dull and matte, and in some places they are no longer preserved in their original form. Moreover, the proportions of some of the body parts look off. The works belong to the ceiling painting that once adorned the Lusthaus (‘Pleasure House’) of the Munich Residence palace. This building, which has not existed for 200 years, stood on the site of today’s Bavarian State Chancellery. People were astonished when a team led by LMU art historian Stephan Hoppe reconstructed a 3D model of the Lusthaus – complete with this ceiling painting – as part of a university seminar.