The King and His Temple

Abstract

Inspired by Gérard Sabatier’s seminal research on representational strategies and encomiastic codes manifested in visual arts, architecture, ceremonies and literature during Early Modern French Monarchy and most eloquently displayed in the complex of Versailles, this overview – with emphasis on religious architecture - will focus on the semantics of the royal image, re-presenting, doubling or substituting the prince’s charismatic presence. Taking as the point of departure Frederick’s Church in Copenhagen – founded by the absolute monarch, King Frederick V in 1749 during the tercentenary of the Oldenburg dynasty – the architecture and the imagery employed are discussed as meaning-laden elements in a symbolic communication. The grandiose ambitions linked with the expensive project of extraordinary dimensions, which at one and the same time would incarnate the Felicitas Temporum of the king’s reign and represent a site of memory to the success of the Danish Absolutism, would nevertheless finally prove fatal to the royal enterprise. Building works stopped in 1770 and the church would remain unfinished for the following 150 years. In 1894 the building was finally finished by a private citizen, the banker C. F. Tietgen, forty-five years after the introduction of a democratic government replaced absolutism with a constitutional monarchy. As a result, the initial vision of the church was redefined, transforming it into a monument to the Lutheran Reformation, as demonstrated in inscriptions and the iconographic programme.