The Gallery of Beauties is a collection of 38 portraits of the most beautiful women from the nobility and bourgeoisie of Munich, Germany, gathered by Ludwig I of Bavaria in the south pavilion of his Nymphenburg Palace. All but two of the portraits were painted between 1827 – 1850 by Joseph Karl Stieler, with two additional portraits created by Friedrich Dürck, a student of Stieler's. The collection's best-known works are the portraits of the shoemaker's daughter Helene Sedlmayr, the actress Charlotte von Hagn, Marianna Marquesa Florenzi, and Eliza Gilbert. They also include a Briton, a Greek, a Scot and an Israelite, along with relations of Ludwig's – the wife and daughter of Ludwig of Oettingen-Wallerstein were both painted, as was Ludwig I's daughter Princess Alexandra of Bavaria. All 38 women pictured were rewarded for modeling by Ludwig I. He took over their dowry, paid them an allowance or found them a job at court. He remained in active correspondence with some of them for years, while others only briefly crossed his life.

Ludwig I or Louis I was King of Bavaria from 1825 until the 1848 revolutions in the German states. When he was crown prince, he was involved in the Napoleonic Wars. As king, he encouraged Bavaria's industrialization, initiating the Ludwig Canal between the rivers Main and the Danube. In 1835, the first German railway was constructed in his domain, between the cities of Fürth and Nuremberg, with his Bavaria joining the Zollverein economic union in 1834. After the July Revolution of 1830 in France, Ludwig's previous liberal policy became increasingly repressive; in 1844, Ludwig was confronted during the Beer riots in Bavaria. During the revolutions of 1848 the king faced increasing protests and demonstrations by students and the middle classes. On 20 March 1848, he abdicated in favour of his eldest son, Maximilian.