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Confrontations et ambiguïtés

Versailles and Dresden: Myths and Models

Versailles et Dresde : mythes et modèles
Maureen Cassidy-Geiger

Résumés

Hormis quelques expositions et publications pionnières récentes, les historiens de l’art qui étudient les règnes d’Auguste le Fort et d’Auguste III ont tendance à se focaliser sur la cour électorale de Dresde, sans vraiment s’intéresser à l’ensemble plus vaste de la Saxe et du royaume de Pologne ou à la cour royale de Varsovie. En outre, les chercheurs voient souvent dans la résidence du Roi-Soleil à Versailles le principal modèle de la cour d’Auguste le Fort à Dresde. Ils marginalisent voire ignorent l’influence qu’auraient pu exercer d’autres résidences royales en France ou en Europe – notamment celles fréquentées par les princes de Saxe à l’occasion de leur Grand Tour ou de visites d’État (Auguste le Fort, par exemple, se rend à la cour de Prusse en 1709 et 1728). Si certains ont jugé démodés – contraires à la modernité – les meubles d’argent acquis par la Saxe, il semble qu’on ait pris conscience du pouvoir de représentation qu’offrait ce type de mobilier, qu’il soit d’origine française ou allemande, l’argent conférant à ces objets un caractère intemporel et non plus obsolète. Ce matériau était emblématique de la richesse de la Saxe : c’est ainsi que les mineurs étaient conviés et célébrés lors de festivités à la cour, comme lors de la fête de Saturne qui clôt le mariage du futur Auguste III avec Marie-Josèphe d’Autriche en 1719.

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  • 1 Much new light was shed on the Saxon-Polish union in Schmidt and Syndram 1997; Cassidy-Geiger 2007; (...)
  • 2 Gaehtgens, Syndram and Saule 2006.
  • 3 See Matzke 2011, for more on the Saxon diplomats posted to the French court.

1Notwithstanding some pioneering exhibitions and publications in recent years, art historians who study the reigns of Augustus the Strong (1670−1733) and his son, Augustus III (1696−1763), the Saxon electors who were elected kings of Poland from 1697−1763, typically focus their attention on the electoral court in Dresden, with little consideration of the broader Saxon-Polish realm or the royal court in Warsaw.1 Further, there is a proclivity to view the residence of the Sun King at Versailles as the primary model for the court of Augustus the Strong in Dresden. Certainly, this was the emphasis of the 2006 exhibition, Splendeurs de la cour de Saxe, Dresde à Versailles.2 By extension, there is a tendency to marginalize or even ignore the probable influence of other royal seats in France and abroad that were known to the Saxon princes from their respective Grand Tours or from state visits, as when Augustus the Strong was at the Prussian court at Berlin in 1709 and 1728. How do we therefore understand the relationship between Versailles and Dresden? Was the court of the Sun King a tangible model that was imprinted on or otherwise absorbed by the Saxon princes who visited Versailles and later ruled as electors and kings? Did their experiences of Versailles inspire them, or were the myth and model of Versailles codified and sustained by the words and images of others, whether artists or agents, reporters or envoys?3

Saxon princes on the Grand Tour in and around Paris

  • 4 For excerpts from the diaries and discussion, see Keller 1994. For the significance of such documen (...)
  • 5 In 1686: 15−16 Jan.; 20−22 Jan.; 11−12 Feb.; 24−27 Feb.; 19−20 March; 30−31 March; 4−5 April; 11 Ap (...)

2There were three Saxon princes who visited Versailles. The first was Crown Prince Johann Georg IV (1668−1694), who made two tours of Europe as comte de Barby and was accompanied by an entourage of twenty-one, headed by Johann (‘Hans’) Ernst von Knoch (1641−1705): in 1685−86, he travelled around northern Europe, stopping in London and Paris, and in 1690 he visited the leading courts of Italy. According to his travel journals, which were kept in German and served both as justification of the expenses of his Grand Tour and as part of his dynastic legacy, he spent five months in Paris, from 23 December 1685 until 19 May 1686, in rented lodgings.4 The journals were essentially official reports by members of the Prince’s staff, as opposed to first-hand accounts by the Prince himself, and record how and where he spent his time, whom he met, if he engaged in activities like hunting or theatre or lessons, or the conditions of the journey from place to place; what he saw is rarely noted. Hence, we know he was at Versailles on thirteen occasions,5 sometimes overnight, outside the palace, in which case he usually dined alone. The journals cite his presence at the lever or toilette, a visit to the Cabinet de Monsieur (drawing room of Monsieur), and tours of the garden, where he viewed the Trianon, menagerie, orangery and waterworks. By comparison, the Prince visited Saint-Cloud five times, the Tuileries at least ten times, and made one-time visits to Marly, the Louvre, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Meudon, Fontainebleau, Chantilly and Saint-Denis; he was also routinely at the Palais-Royal, and visited Madame and Monsieur at Saint-Cloud too. Johann Georg reigned as elector for just three years, from 1691−94, before succumbing to smallpox.

  • 6 Keller 1994.
  • 7 Moureau 2014. Of interest will be the forthcoming papers from the Heidelberg and Versailles Novembe (...)
  • 8 In 1687: 29 June; 5 July; 11 July; 13 July; 22 July; 2 Aug.; 12 Aug.; 25 Aug.; 3 Sept.; 14 Sept.; i (...)
  • 9 The Palatine chapel at Versailles, as we know it today, was constructed between 1689 and 1710 and w (...)
  • 10 Ruggero 2017.
  • 11 Thépaut-Cabasset 2007.
  • 12 See Cassidy-Geiger and Vötsch 2007−2008; and Annex ‘Ceremonial documentation in the private estate (...)

3His brother and successor, Friedrich August I, the future Augustus II ‘the Strong’, was on the Grand Tour in 1687−89 as comte de Lusace (Graf zu Leüßnigk), with a staff of twenty-two headed by Christian August von Haxthausen (1653−1696). According to the archival documentation, a three-year tour was initially envisioned, with stops in London and Sweden, but the Prince ultimately travelled for just two years, to Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Barcelona, Genoa, Florence, Venice and Vienna. He spent a total of nine months in Paris during two visits: from 24 June until 17 September 1687 and from 20 May until 7 November 1688.6 Like his brother, he was usually in the company of other foreigners and frequently with Madame Palatine, who served as hostess to the German princes who came to Paris.7 He visited Versailles sixteen times and the accounts specifically mention the Trianon, menagerie and Grand Canal8; one can imagine that the painted lead sculptures of Le Nôtre’s labyrinth at Versailles were apt models for the porcelain menagerie of Augustus the Strong, even if we have no compelling evidence that he was guided through the Labyrinth or remembered it with gusto. By comparison, he travelled to Saint-Cloud fifteen times, was at the Tuileries five times, and made visits to the Palais-Royal, Marly, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Meudon, Fontainebleau, Chantilly and Saint-Denis. The Gobelins and Colbert’s château at Sceaux were also on his itinerary, indicating an early awareness of French prestige industries. The Prince’s experience of Louis XIV’s network of palaces beyond Versailles is often cited as the impetus for establishing the same types of specialized residences in and around Dresden: that is, the hunting lodge at Moritzburg, the pleasure palace at Pillnitz, and the ornamental gardens at Gross-Sedlitz; not to mention the Japanese Palace, the orangery known as the Zwinger, and a menagerie in Dresden. Nevertheless, one wonders if the decaying Trianon de Porcelaine, erected in 1670 and demolished in 1687, was really the model for Augustus the Strong’s Japanese Palace in Dresden; some modern writers refer to it as the ‘Saxon Versailles’, a label that could as easily be applied to Augustus III’s hunting palace at Hubertusburg.9 Cristina Ruggero has argued that Count von Brühl, who never travelled to France, was inspired to create his own network of residences, galleries and gardens under the influence of Augustus the Strong, which might be said to demonstrate either the ongoing influence of Versailles or the assimilation of the French model such that it became identified with Augustus the Strong instead of Louis XIV.10 However, it is in the realm of ceremonial, above all, that we might consider the impact of Versailles at the court of Dresden. Certainly, the diplomatic-gift traditions of the French court, as codified in the Présents du Roi, informed gift-giving in Europe and beyond.11 But with the hiring of Johann von Besser from Berlin, Dresden acquired a Master of Ceremonies with his own understanding of pan-European traditions according to his exhaustive collection of reports from multiple sources, in multiple languages, encompassing not only gift-giving but also court festivities, religious occasions, investitures, incognito, mistresses, opera and widows.12

  • 13 His son and heir, Friedrich Christian (1722−1763), travelled only in Italy, as comte de Lusace, sto (...)
  • 14 The journals comprise seven bound volumes, one for each year of the tour; Sächsisches Hauptstaatsar (...)

4Crown Prince Friedrich August II (1696-1763), who succeeded his father as Augustus III, made a seven-year Grand Tour, from 1711−19, which accommodated his conversion to Catholicism in Bologna in 1712 and his marriage to the Habsburg Archduchess Maria Josepha in Vienna in 1719.13 This particular Tour is largely unresearched and warrants more scholarly interest; the travel journals, held by the Dresden State Archives, are mostly in German, with some entries in French.14 Still in his teen years, the Prince was in Paris for nine months, from 7 September 1714 until 7 June 1715. His first meeting with Louis XIV was at Fontainebleau on 26 September 1714 and his final audience was planned for Marly. It was not until 16 November 1714 that he visited Versailles for the first time; he returned on 18 February 1715, a day ahead of the King’s audience with the Persian ambassador in the Hall of Mirrors.

Agents, artists and eyewitnesses at Versailles and beyond

5Augustus the Strong’s peripatetic agent, Raymond Leplat (c. 1664−1742), joined Friedrich August II in Paris and identified works of art as well as artists for the Dresden court while there. He commissioned a series of twenty large canvases of the life of the Saxon-Polish King from Louis de Silvestre (1675−1760) for the State Apartments, which would also serve as cartoons for tapestries, in a nod to the Gobelins l’Histoire du roi. (Fig. 1)

Fig. 1. Louis de Silvestre, Louis XIV receives the Prince of Saxony, future Augustus III, at Fontainebleau, 27 September 1714, oil on canvas, 1715. Versailles, musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, MV 4344.

Fig. 1. Louis de Silvestre, Louis XIV receives the Prince of Saxony, future Augustus III, at Fontainebleau, 27 September 1714, oil on canvas, 1715. Versailles, musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, MV 4344.

http://collections.chateauversailles.fr/​#3c6515fe-4efa-4201-ad33-98737085a3dc

© Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN / © Christophe Fouin

  • 15 E.g., Spenlé 2006, 2008 and 2011.

6Virginie Spenlé has characterized Leplat as the most overlooked tastemaker in Dresden, and certainly her publications have addressed this oversight by informing us about his movements and methodology.15 In principle, he travelled to various capital cities to collect visual information and prices for works of art which he then communicated to the King in longwinded letters, sometimes accompanied by illustrations. His eye and mandate extended to porcelain, sculpture, painting and treasury objects. Leplat was one of the designers of the State Apartments that were renovated ahead of the elaborate monthlong celebrations mounted for the 1719 wedding, which required grand silver vessels for a Büffetzimmer. (Fig. 2)

Fig. 2. Raymond Leplat, Silver Buffet in the Dresden Residence, drawing and watercolour, c. 1718−19. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, C 6756.

Fig. 2. Raymond Leplat, Silver Buffet in the Dresden Residence, drawing and watercolour, c. 1718−19. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, C 6756.

https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/​Details/​Index/​1119514

© Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Photo: Herbert Boswank

  • 16 Published by Cassidy-Geiger 2016−2017.

7A group of apparently French drawings acquired by Leplat in Paris as models for the silver for the Büffetzimmer has survived in the Dresden State Archives; they can be linked to him thanks to the annotations in his distinctive penmanship and phonetic French.16 (Fig. 3)

Fig. 3. Design for a wine cooler with the Orléans arms, probably French, drawing, early eighteenth century, with notations by Raymond Leplat. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10006, Oberhofmarschallamt, Plankammer, Cap. 8, no. 5b.

Fig. 3. Design for a wine cooler with the Orléans arms, probably French, drawing, early eighteenth century, with notations by Raymond Leplat. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10006, Oberhofmarschallamt, Plankammer, Cap. 8, no. 5b.

https://archiv.sachsen.de/​archiv/​bestand.jsp?guid=b5561c30-7edd-464b-a253-7a98f69beabb

Image provided by the museum under the license CC BY 3.0

  • 17 For a revelatory contribution to the history of the Berlin silver buffet, see Hagemann and Winterbo (...)

8Ultimately, however, silver from Augsburg was acquired and the drawings were repurposed as models for Meissen stoneware and porcelain. Certainly, Augustus the Strong’s visit to Berlin in 1709, together with the King of Denmark, allowed him to witness the famous silver buffet there, and several renderings of German silver buffets can be found in the Dresden State Archives.17 (Fig. 4)

Fig. 4. Partial elevation for a silver buffet, surmounted by the crest of Hanover, drawing, early eighteenth century. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10006, Oberhofmarschallamt, Plankammer, Cap. 8, no. 7h.

Fig. 4. Partial elevation for a silver buffet, surmounted by the crest of Hanover, drawing, early eighteenth century. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10006, Oberhofmarschallamt, Plankammer, Cap. 8, no. 7h.

https://www.archiv.sachsen.de/​archiv/​bestand.jsp?guid=696c53ce-2c59-4d0f-83d9-b7db8b41035e

Image provided by the museum under the license CC BY 3.0

  • 18 See Cassidy-Geiger 2021, pp. 6−33.

9Further, the Polish and Danish kings were so impressed by the porcelain rooms at Berlin, Caputh and Oranienburg that Augustus the Strong sent his architect, Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann (1662−1736), to Berlin to study them and make sketches in conjunction with the expansion of the Japanese Palace in Dresden, while Frederick IV of Denmark, too, requested drawings.18 Yet the double-gilt service commissioned for the 1719 Dresden wedding might, in fact, signal the influence of Vienna, much more than Versailles, and the imperial ambitions attached to the marriage of the Crown Prince to the daughter of the late Emperor Joseph I.

10In essence, the influence of Versailles was more readily disseminated by French prints and drawings, not to mention by the French artists and architects who worked in Dresden, or the Saxon diplomats and agents who spent time in Paris. Remarkably, the Meissen manufactory’s legendary sculptor, Johann Joachim Kändler (1706−1775), travelled to Versailles in 1750 to accompany and assemble a gift from Augustus III to the Dauphine, comprising an enormous Meissen porcelain mirror and pier table. It was too large for her apartments and was briefly installed in the Salon de la Guerre (War Room), where it was criticized and from where it eventually disappeared. To date, there are no reports about Kändler’s time at Versailles or Paris, beyond the manufactory’s report for August 1750:

  • 19 ‘Rapport Mense Augusti 1750. Es ist gehorsamst zu vermelden, daß auf allerhöchste Königliche Verord (...)

Report for August 1750. It is hereby reported that, by the highest royal commission, commercial-councillor Mr Helbig and high-commissioner Mr Kändler left for Paris on 5 August, to bring the porcelain trumeau [overmantle mirror] and other items to Her Royal Highness, Madame the Dauphine.19

  • 20 See Schnitzer and Hölscher 2000.
  • 21 Cassidy-Geiger 2008; also Cassidy-Geiger 2006.
  • 22 For transcriptions of Tschirnhaus’s reports from Paris addressed to Anton Egon von Fürstenberg, see (...)
  • 23 Ullmann 2004 suggests this was the medalist Jean Duvivier, who was born in Liège in 1687, however, (...)

11Works on paper were acquired in bulk for the Dresden print cabinet and library, as collector’s items as well as models for artists and designers.20 Certainly, the festival culture of the Sun King, as communicated in prints in particular, informed court festivities in Dresden. Yet several art historians have suggested that Augustus the Strong positioned himself not merely as a Sun King, but as the centre of a self-fashioned universe and of the world, whether costumed as an African prince or Greco-Roman ruler or mythological god. Marchands-merciers, too, crisscrossed the Continent, and French chefs d’office were employed by the Saxon-Polish kings and even by the Prime Minister, Heinrich, Count von Brühl, instilling French tastes, not necessarily specific to Versailles, at the Dresden court.21 The royal chef d’office was, at one point, Nicholas Corthier; von Brühl’s pastry chef was named La Chapelle and was perhaps related to Vincent La Chapelle, author of Le cuisinier moderne (1735 and 1742). The roving scientist Baron Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651−1708) also stopped in Paris on multiple occasions on his four tours of Europe and was even tutor to one of Colbert’s sons at one point; his reports to Anton Egon von Fürstenberg, compiled in 1702, suggest von Tschirnhaus was engaged in industrial espionage, which involved visiting factories and workshops, like the Gobelins and the Saint-Cloud porcelain manufactory, writing observations and collecting samples.22 He was in Paris for altogether eight weeks, from mid-November 1701 until 19 January 1702, and visited Versailles on a couple of unspecified dates, in the company of Louis, duc d’Aumont (1632−1704), Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646−1708), the evidently very helpful ‘Monsieur du Vivier’, and others of rank.23 Von Tschirnhaus noted in particular the crystal chandeliers and the Trianon de Porcelaine. In Paris, he was introduced to Girardon, noting that he was the author of the statues in the gardens at Versailles.

Silver furnishings at the court of Dresden

12Although it is generally assumed that the silver furniture made in Augsburg for the State Apartments in Dresden was inspired by that at Versailles, which was melted down in 1689, there is no clear evidence that the future Augustus the Strong formed an enduring memory of the French pieces from personal experience. (Fig. 5)

Fig. 5. Sébastien Leclerc, La grande Galerie de Versailles, vûe en perspective dans une partie de sa longueur, showing silver furniture by Claude Ballin, frontispiece to Madeleine de Scudéry, Conversations Nouvelles sur divers sujets, engraving, c. 1680. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département des Estampes et de la Photographie, RESERVE FOL-QB-201 (58).

Fig. 5. Sébastien Leclerc, La grande Galerie de Versailles, vûe en perspective dans une partie de sa longueur, showing silver furniture by Claude Ballin, frontispiece to Madeleine de Scudéry, Conversations Nouvelles sur divers sujets, engraving, c. 1680. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département des Estampes et de la Photographie, RESERVE FOL-QB-201 (58).

https://gallica.bnf.fr/​ark:/12148/​btv1b8406264j

Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF

13Doubtless any recollection or desire were fostered by prints and by the reports or advice of others. (Fig. 6)

Fig. 6. Albrecht Biller, Silver Table, silver and wood, Augsburg c. 1710–19. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 37532.

Fig. 6. Albrecht Biller, Silver Table, silver and wood, Augsburg c. 1710–19. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 37532.

https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/​Details/​Index/​296281

© Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Photo: Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut

  • 24 See Minning and Richter 2007, pp. 143−59, especially p. 158.
  • 25 See Schnitzer 2014, pp. 212−27.

14Even if some have considered the German pieces retardataire as opposed to au courant, it seems there was an aspirational awareness of the representational significance of silver furnishings that made such products timeless instead of antiquated. Thus, the King was not dissuaded when his advisors warned him that silver furniture would tarnish and assume a funereal aspect, according to hearsay from Prince Eugene in Vienna, who also eschewed mixing white silver with gilt: by 1723, Augustus the Strong owned forty-eight gueridons, twelve tables, twenty-four chandeliers, some of them gilded, ten andirons, eight fireplace grates and seven mirrors.24 Indeed, silver was so emblematic of the wealth of the state of Saxony that miners were featured and celebrated in court festivities, as in the concluding event of the 1719 wedding, the Festival of Saturn.25 They were also essential in wartime, for their ability to tunnel under fortifications to plant bombs. In essence, the industry was a national treasure and worthy of representation in tangible ways.

Conclusion

15The Saxon princes on the Grand Tour were exposed to far more than Versailles, whether in Paris and France or beyond. Once home, they most likely were reminded of their experiences by their journals and the recollections of others; eventually, prints and drawings brought these memories back to life. Versailles was and remains a mythic ideal, somewhat frozen in the time of Louis XIV, just as the Dresden of Augustus the Strong sometimes obscures the courts of his successors and of Warsaw. Whether rooted in habit or bias or simple inertia, it seems a loss to history, and to scholarship, to foster the myth and model of Versailles without considering alternatives, be they Berlin, Vienna or beyond.

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Spenlé Virginie, 2011, ‘Sächsische Gesandte als Kunstagenten in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Neues Archiv für sächsische Geschichte, vol. 82, pp. 255−63.

Thépaut-Cabasset Corinne, 2007, ‘Présents du roi: An archive at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris’, Decorative Arts, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, New York, vol. 15, no. 1, fall-winter 2007, pp. 4−18.

Ullmann Mathias, 2004, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus Gesamtausgabe: Reihe II, Amtliche Schriften. Abt. 1 Amtlicher Schriftverkehr mit dem sachsischen Hof, Leipzig/Stuttgart, Verlag der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften/F. Steiner.

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Notes

1 Much new light was shed on the Saxon-Polish union in Schmidt and Syndram 1997; Cassidy-Geiger 2007; Koch and Ruggero 2017.

2 Gaehtgens, Syndram and Saule 2006.

3 See Matzke 2011, for more on the Saxon diplomats posted to the French court.

4 For excerpts from the diaries and discussion, see Keller 1994. For the significance of such documentation for posterity, see Bepler 2005.

5 In 1686: 15−16 Jan.; 20−22 Jan.; 11−12 Feb.; 24−27 Feb.; 19−20 March; 30−31 March; 4−5 April; 11 April; 22−23 April; 30 April; 11 May; 20−21 May; 28 May.

6 Keller 1994.

7 Moureau 2014. Of interest will be the forthcoming papers from the Heidelberg and Versailles November 2022 conference, ‘De Heidelberg à Versailles. Élisabeth-Charlotte du Palatinat, “Madame Palatine” (1652−1722)’. The anniversary of her death is also recognized by the exhibition ‘Madame Palatine: Liselotte of the Palatinate at the Court of the Sun King’ (Kurpfälzisches Museum der Stadt Heidelberg, Nov. 2022−Jan. 2023).

8 In 1687: 29 June; 5 July; 11 July; 13 July; 22 July; 2 Aug.; 12 Aug.; 25 Aug.; 3 Sept.; 14 Sept.; in 1688: 20 June; 28 June; 11 July; 29 July; 15 Aug.; 25 Sept.

9 The Palatine chapel at Versailles, as we know it today, was constructed between 1689 and 1710 and witnessed only by the future Augustus III; it is worth noting, therefore, that the chapel attached to the palace in Dresden is similarly situated but was Roman in taste and design, and built much later. Further ties to Versailles are treated in Schuster 2022.

10 Ruggero 2017.

11 Thépaut-Cabasset 2007.

12 See Cassidy-Geiger and Vötsch 2007−2008; and Annex ‘Ceremonial documentation in the private estate of the Dresden Master of Ceremonies, Johann von Besser: an untapped resource for court historians’: https://journals.openedition.org/crcv/26830#annexes.

13 His son and heir, Friedrich Christian (1722−1763), travelled only in Italy, as comte de Lusace, stopping in Vienna too; his journals and other archival documentation, mostly in French, are also found in the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden (Dresden State Archives). For transcriptions and related content, visit https://comtedelusace.wordpress.com/.

14 The journals comprise seven bound volumes, one for each year of the tour; Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10026, Geheimes Kabinett, Loc. 758/1–758/7.

15 E.g., Spenlé 2006, 2008 and 2011.

16 Published by Cassidy-Geiger 2016−2017.

17 For a revelatory contribution to the history of the Berlin silver buffet, see Hagemann and Winterbottom 2007.

18 See Cassidy-Geiger 2021, pp. 6−33.

19 ‘Rapport Mense Augusti 1750. Es ist gehorsamst zu vermelden, daß auf allerhöchste Königliche Verordnung, Herr Commercien-Rath Helbig und Herr Hoch-Commissarius Kändler, den 5. Aug. c.a. von hier nach Paris abgereiset, um Ihro Königl:Hoheit Madame Dauphine den von Porcellain verfertigten Trimou und andere Stücken mehr, zu überbringen.’ See Schwartz and Munger 2007. English translation of the quote is by the author.

20 See Schnitzer and Hölscher 2000.

21 Cassidy-Geiger 2008; also Cassidy-Geiger 2006.

22 For transcriptions of Tschirnhaus’s reports from Paris addressed to Anton Egon von Fürstenberg, see Ullmann 2004, especially pp. 39−50.

23 Ullmann 2004 suggests this was the medalist Jean Duvivier, who was born in Liège in 1687, however, and did not move to Paris until 1710.

24 See Minning and Richter 2007, pp. 143−59, especially p. 158.

25 See Schnitzer 2014, pp. 212−27.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1. Louis de Silvestre, Louis XIV receives the Prince of Saxony, future Augustus III, at Fontainebleau, 27 September 1714, oil on canvas, 1715. Versailles, musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, MV 4344.
Légende http://collections.chateauversailles.fr/​#3c6515fe-4efa-4201-ad33-98737085a3dc
URL http://journals.openedition.org/crcv/docannexe/image/26830/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 148k
Titre Fig. 2. Raymond Leplat, Silver Buffet in the Dresden Residence, drawing and watercolour, c. 1718−19. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, C 6756.
Légende https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/​Details/​Index/​1119514
URL http://journals.openedition.org/crcv/docannexe/image/26830/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 142k
Titre Fig. 3. Design for a wine cooler with the Orléans arms, probably French, drawing, early eighteenth century, with notations by Raymond Leplat. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10006, Oberhofmarschallamt, Plankammer, Cap. 8, no. 5b.
Légende https://archiv.sachsen.de/​archiv/​bestand.jsp?guid=b5561c30-7edd-464b-a253-7a98f69beabb
URL http://journals.openedition.org/crcv/docannexe/image/26830/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 482k
Titre Fig. 4. Partial elevation for a silver buffet, surmounted by the crest of Hanover, drawing, early eighteenth century. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, 10006, Oberhofmarschallamt, Plankammer, Cap. 8, no. 7h.
Légende https://www.archiv.sachsen.de/​archiv/​bestand.jsp?guid=696c53ce-2c59-4d0f-83d9-b7db8b41035e
Crédits Image provided by the museum under the license CC BY 3.0
URL http://journals.openedition.org/crcv/docannexe/image/26830/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,4M
Titre Fig. 5. Sébastien Leclerc, La grande Galerie de Versailles, vûe en perspective dans une partie de sa longueur, showing silver furniture by Claude Ballin, frontispiece to Madeleine de Scudéry, Conversations Nouvelles sur divers sujets, engraving, c. 1680. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département des Estampes et de la Photographie, RESERVE FOL-QB-201 (58).
Légende https://gallica.bnf.fr/​ark:/12148/​btv1b8406264j
Crédits Source: gallica.bnf.fr / BnF
URL http://journals.openedition.org/crcv/docannexe/image/26830/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 446k
Titre Fig. 6. Albrecht Biller, Silver Table, silver and wood, Augsburg c. 1710–19. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 37532.
Légende https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/​Details/​Index/​296281
Crédits © Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Photo: Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut
URL http://journals.openedition.org/crcv/docannexe/image/26830/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 169k
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Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, « Versailles and Dresden: Myths and Models »Bulletin du Centre de recherche du château de Versailles [En ligne], 23 | 2023, mis en ligne le 03 mai 2023, consulté le 13 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/crcv/26830 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/crcv.26830

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Auteur

Maureen Cassidy-Geiger

An internationally recognized curator, scholar and educator with special expertise in European decorative arts, patterns of collecting and display, Meissen porcelain and Dresden court culture, Maureen Cassidy-Geiger organized the exhibitions ‘Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts, c. 1710–63’ (Bard Graduate Center, New York, 2007–08) and ‘The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain, 1710–50’ (Frick Collection, New York, 2008). In 2018, she curated ‘The Grand Cure: A Disabled Saxon Prince and his Tour of Italy, 1738–40’ at the Dresden State Museums. 2021 saw the publication of her two-volume catalogue, Living with Architecture as Art: The Peter May Collection of Architectural Drawings, Models, and Artefacts (Ad Ilissum).
Conservatrice, chercheuse et enseignante de renommée internationale avec une expertise dans les arts décoratifs européens, les pratiques de collection et d’exposition, la porcelaine de Saxe et la culture à la cour de Dresde, Maureen Cassidy-Geiger a organisé les expositions « Fragile Diplomacy : Meissen Porcelain for European Courts, c. 1710-63 » (New York, Bard Graduate Center, 2007-2008) et « The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain, 1710–50 » (New York, Frick Collection, 2008). En 2018, elle a organisé « The Grand Cure : A Disabled Saxon Prince and his Tour of Italy, 1738–40 » aux Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). En 2021 elle a publié le catalogue en 2 volumes : Living with Architecture as Art: The Peter May Collection of Architectural Drawings, Models, and Artefacts (Ad Ilissum).
https://wellesley.academia.edu/MaureenCassidyGeiger
https://comtedelusace.wordpress.com/
https://thepetermaycollectionofarchitecturaldrawings.wordpress.com/
cassidygeiger[at]gmail.com

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