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Home , Agostino Steffani, Arcangelo Corelli, Claudio Monteverdi, Johann Pachelbel

Introduction

During the first half of the eighteenth century, the principalities of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation witnessed a remarkable efflorescence of palace fresco painting executed largely by Italian artists.1 Beginning in the Austrian and Czech lands in the late seventeenth century and spreading to the German territories by 1700, large-scale Italian ceiling paintings soared in popularity as Catholic and Protestant nobles of all ranks competed with one another to produce ever more lavish decorative schemes that expressed their claim to princely power and political authority. Drawing upon various picto- rial styles and iconographic programs from and across Europe, frescoists and decorators developed new types of imagery that uniquely embodied their patrons’ ambitions and cultural aspirations.2 A synthesis of predominantly Italian and French styles and forms per- vaded Austro-German culture and society in this period and critically shaped the evolution of their visual and performing arts.3 Although this book concentrates on Italy’s primary contribution to the production of these monu- mental fresco cycles, it is important to acknowledge that French culture under Louis XIV (1638–1714) and Louis XV (1710–1774) played an equally crucial role in influencing Imperial palace design and decoration as well as court music and theater. In the past, scholars sometimes viewed the presence of these two

1 Starting in the Early Middle Ages under Charlemagne and Otto I and continuing until Napoleon’s dissolution of the Empire in 1806, rulers and authors referred to the loose federation of states overseen by an imperial monarch as the “Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation.” These lands consisted of present-day Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic as well as parts of France, Poland, and Italy. 2 Other countries that played a key role in the rise of these emerging iconographies were the Austro-German principalities, France, , Sweden, and Spain. 3 It is well known that active in the German states also combined both Italian and French forms in their orchestral, operatic, choral, and chamber works. Some prominent figures were Pachelbel (1653–1706), Agostino Steffani (1654–1728), (1681–1767), (1685–1750), and Georg Friedrich Händel (1685–1764). For inspiration, they looked to their predecessors and contemporaries who included, among many others, (1567–1643), (1583–1543), Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687), Corelli (1653–1714), and (1678–1741). For several discussions of how composers in the Empire synthesized these traditions, see Melania Bucciarelli, Norbert Dubowy, and Reinhard Strohm, eds., Italian in Central Europe, 3 vols. (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2006–2008); Colin Timms, Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and his Music (Oxford: , 2003).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004308053_002 2 Introduction cultural types in the Empire as distinct from one another and exclusively defin- ing the image of individual courts and monarchs.4 In fact, a closer examination of court practices in the German principalities indicates the exact opposite situation: Italian and French models mutually coexisted from the 1680s to the 1760s. Rulers very often melded them to suit their particular preferences, achieve a range of political and social goals, and display their cosmopolitanism among other Austro-German and European nobles.5 Broadly stated, the impor- tation of both cultural and artistic traditions by various sovereigns served as a means of expressing the internationalism of their respective courts, a crucial criterion by which fellow aristocrats measured their degree of political impor- tance and social prestige.6 The former tendency to emphasize one cultural tradition’s decisive impact on the German aristocracy hindered more nuanced interpretations of these cycles and their relationship to broad historical and societal developments. Apart from attributing specific commissions to a ruler’s single cultural orien- tation, scholars often examined palace architecture and Italian ceilings inde- pendently and regionally.7 The fact that the Reich was politically fragmented in this historical period, in sharp contrast to fully unified nations such as France or England, further informed and resulted in prior assessments of these programs as provincial, remote creations that were disparate. While some previous theorists and specialists have caricaturized the Reich inaccurately as a dysfunctional monstrosity in comparison to nations such as France and

4 See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Court, Cloister, and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe, 1450–1800 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995); Adrien Fauchier-Magnan, The Small German Courts in the Eighteenth Century, Mervyn Savill, trans. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1958). 5 Most notably, this kind of cultural merging occurred at the courts of , Dresden, and Württemberg under the ‘Blue Elector’ Maximilian II Emanuel of (1662–1726); Augustus II “the Strong,” King of Poland and Elector of Saxony (1670–1733); and Duke Eberhard Ludwig von Württemberg (1676–1733). For a study of French architects and artists active in the eighteenth-century German states, consult Pierre du Colombier, L’architecture française en Allemagne au XVIIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956). 6 Susan Maxwell has discussed the notion of cultural internationalism in relation to the Wittelsbachs’ importation of Italian art and culture to sixteenth-century Bavaria. See Susan Maxwell, The Court Art of Friedrich Sustris: Patronage in Late Bavaria (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2011), 1–14. 7 For example, see Roswitha Jacobsen, ed., Residenzkultur in Thüringen vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Jena: quartus-Verlag, 1999); Hans M. Schmidt and Klára Garas, eds., Himmel, Ruhm und Herrlichkeit: Italienische Künstler an rheinischen Höfen des Barock, exh. cat. (Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag, 1989); Werner Fleischhauer, Barock im Herzogtum Württemberg (: W. Kohlhummer Verlag, 1958).