It was only after the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) that the arts started to revive in Germany, and the baroque could enter in full swing, a hundred years after it had done so in Italy. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Germany saw a proliferation of palace construction by the rulers of local principalities eager to assert their status, legitimize their power, and compete with their peers across the Holy Roman Empire. Italy provided the earliest models for the German baroque: central to the iconographic programs commissioned by the German rulers were the Italian interiors culminating in great ceiling frescoes. Although Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) and his preferences in painting did not exert a tremendous influence on the German nobility, the enormous scale of his building projects at the Louvre and Versailles certainly did. As a result, between the 1680s and 1760s, Italian models coexisted alongside French ones and both were variously adapted to suit the preferences and aspirations of German rulers.
Notable among the palaces built during that time was Schloss Ludwigsburg, the residence of Duke Eberhard Ludwig von Württemberg (ruled 1692–1733). The Italian artists, architects, and craftsmen whom Eberhard Ludwig commissioned to work on Schloss Ludwigburg remained unequaled in eighteenth-century Germany in terms of number and renown. The palace—one of the largest in the Holy Roman Empire—underwent two main phases of expansion. The first was carried out by the court architect Philipp Joseph Jenisch (1671–1736) and his successor Johann Friedrich Nette (1672–1714), who designed the Altes Corps de Logis. To commemorate his palace’s construction and decoration, Eberhard Ludwig commissioned a series of illustrated books that were distributed across Europe. The first volume, Vues et parties principales de Louis-Bourg (1712), was published by Nette in both French and German, and it includes numerous engravings of the facade elevations of Altes Corps de Logis, its projected interiors, and floor plans.
This perspective view shows the garden facade of the palace.
Bibliography
- Fulco, Daniel. “Italian Frescoes in German Baroque Palaces: Visual Culture and Princely Power in the Holy Roman Empire.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014.
Image Source
- Nette, Johann F. Veues et parties principales de Louis-Bourg, à Son Altesse Sre. Monsgr. le Duc Regnent de Wurtemberg. Augsburg: Ieremias Wolff excudit, 1712.
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