Visions of power: Andreas Schlüter's monuments to the Great Elector and Friedrich III and I

Abstract

When Friedrich Wilhelm the Great Elector (the Grose Kurfurst, reigned 1640-88) died in 1688, Berlin was under the cultural domination of the Netherlands.1 Friedrich Wilhelm had studied in the Netherlands in his youth, and in 1646 married Louise Henriette, a daughter of the Dutch Stadtholder Frederik Hendrik. Relations between the countries were close, and the elector was to visit the Netherlands frequently in later years. The nation was well informed about Dutch art. In 1651 Luise Henriette commissioned a statue of her spouse from Francois Dieussart (c.1600-61), which was installed in the Lustgarten.2 During Friedrich Wilhelm's reign, work by the most outstanding Dutch sculptors arrived in Berlin - among them, besides Dieussart, Artus Quellinus (1609-68) and Bartholomeus Eggers (c.1637-92).3 However, by the end of the century the aura surrounding Dutch art had faded. Friedrich III (reigned 1688-1713), aspired to higher things. He wanted Brandenburg's new foreign policy and military strength to find appropriate expression on the diplomatic level, and this could only mean enhancing the dignity of an elector by the dignity of kingship.4 The international prerequisites for this were not unfavourable, for in the Duchy of Prussia he ruled a domain that was no longer part of the Holy Roman Empire, and could thus attain the status of a kingdom - unlike the Margravate of Brandenburg.The way to the crown - finally accomplished in 1701 - was accompanied by an extraordinarily ambitious instrumentalization of politics in art.5 When at the start of his reign, Friedrich III wished to commission his own statue from Bartholomeus Eggers, it was because the sculptor - in the service of the Great Elector - had produced statues of his eleven predecessors for the Alabastersaal of his town palace, the Berliner Schloss.6 Soon the Dutch connection was not sufficient. The magnetism of ancient and papal Rome and of the France of Louis XIV was stronger. One of the artists brought in for the aggrandisement of Berlin was Andreas Schluter (1659-1714), appointed sculptor to the court of Brandenburg in 1694.7 Schluter had an unprecedented career in Berlin in his first years there, and was to create two monuments, one posthumously for the Great Elector (fig. 1)8 and one for his son, Friedrich III (fig. 12).9 In 1698 his post was only court sculptor, yet he was entrusted with the costly and complex reconstruction of the Berliner Schloss.10 Today, Schluter is renowned equally as both a sculptor and an architect.Andreas Schluter was born in Danzig in 1659, and trained there as a sculptor in stone.11 He may have found a post in the service of the Polish king, Jan III Sobieski, and moved to Warsaw. He might have been involved in the extensions to the royal residence in Wilanow, though to a lesser extent than the relevant scholarship has assumed. Wilanow was a melting pot, where King Jan III Sobieski united artists and works of art from many European countries.12 Schluter learnt a great deal there, and encountered an inspiring appreciation of Michelangelo's architecture at the court, where the leading architect, Agostino Locci, referred explicitly to Michelangelo's palaces on the Capitoline Hill.13 Schluter could have made his first visit to Italy during this period. In the early 1690s he worked on tombs for the Sobieski family, and was commissioned as a sculptor by one of the leading aristocratic families in Poland, the Krasin' ski, for the building of their new palace in Warsaw.It seems certain that he was engaged in Berlin for some projects that had already been settled, first and foremost among them the sculpture on the Lange Brucke (Long Bridge), which was then approaching completion.14 One of these was an equestrian statue (fig. 1). It says much for the farsightedness of the court that only a few months after Schluter's arrival, it hired an experienced bronze founder to cast the two monuments. His name was Johann Jacobi (1661-1726), born in (Bad) Homburg. …