The Gallery of Meissen Animals
Augustus the Strong’s Menagerie for the Japanese Palace in Dresden
Distributed for Hirmer Publishers
The Gallery of Meissen Animals
Augustus the Strong’s Menagerie for the Japanese Palace in Dresden
Samuel Wittwer’s research has revealed a profusion of inter-relations between this fragile porcelain menagerie and the various other animal collections at the Dresden court. This book does not consider the animal figures in art historical terms alone. On the contrary, it presents them in their historical and topographical context and traces the manifold relations between the figures and the world in which they came into being. In so doing it also offers the reader a wealth of insights into the relationships between art, society, and politics at the Dresden court in the second quarter of the eighteenth century.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
The historical background to the large animal figures
Aspects of the Baroque interior
Animal sculpture in the late Renaissance and Baroque
Part One: The Palace and the Animals: Fundamentals of their genesis and appearance
The Japanese Palace
The porcelain animals for the Japanese Palace: the cultural, technical, and artistic conditions
Part Two: The Palace and the Animals: The historical and topographical context
The Japanese Palace and Augustus the Strong’s overall plan
The Animal Gallery: its structure and interpretive levels
Part Three: The Palace and the Animals: Content and effect
The Japanese Palace: a claim to power in bricks and stone
The animal figures: form and effect
Part Four: The Animals and the Palace: What is their “meaning” and how are they related?
The animal figures as sculptures
The animal figures and the model Residence: two mutually formative works of art
Postlude
The animal figures and their artistic influence in the tide of time: a short summary
The Meissen large animal figures in the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries
Appendix
Catalog
Glossary
Index of places
Index of artists and historical personages
Index of animal names
Illustration credits