The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn R A LF B O R M A N N The Dispersal of the Wallmoden Collection In the Herrenhausen palace, just a few hundred metres from the former Wallmodenpalais (today the Wilhelm Busch Museum of Caricature and Drawing), after almost 200 years it has been possible to reconstitute parts of the Wallmoden Gallery. Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn (Illus. 1; cf. Cat. No. H 1 and H 2), an illegitimate son of George II (cf. Cat. No. 23), had the palace built in what is today Georgengarten to house his art collection after its completion in the later 1790s1 (Illus. 2; cf. Cat. No. H 10). With the dispersal of the Gallery of Imperial Count (Reichsgraf) Wallmoden in 1818, a legacy was erased from the ‘Golden Days of Hanover‘ in the latter half of the 18th century, that is, from a time when nobody had to worry about raised eyebrows at a proposed visit to Hanover in the expectation of enjoying fine art. In his Geschichte der zeichnenden Künste (1820), art historian Johann Dominicus Fiorillo from Göttingen related how even at the beginning of the 19th century in the town of Hanover, “which until now was hardly famous regarding art” and “where the appreciation of art [. . .] was still slumbering”, the “skilful and assiduous engraver Huck” (cf. Cat. No. H 3) by founding an art institute had tried to put an end to Hanover’s unfortunate ‘artistic slumber’. “For this wonderful purpose” Wallmoden had “magnanimously his best drawings and antiques at [Huck’s] disposal”; it was a pleasure to see that not only “the sons of the nobility as well as of the bourgeoisie and also of the Jewry attended this collectively”, but that in the mornings drawing lessons were even given to “several young womenfolk” to improve their artistic taste.2 Besides, according to Friedrich Ballhorn in his Nachricht von der gräflich Wallmoden-Gimbornschen Antikensammlung zu Hannover in 1798, Johann Gerhard Huck, an “estimable artist”, had been commissioned by Count Wallmoden “to duplicate the most beautiful pieces of the considerable collection of paintings with his stylus [. . .].”3 It seems that the preliminary drawings for these engravings, which were pasted into the Album Kielmansegg in 1814 (Cat. No. H 5)4 by Wallmoden’s heirs were intended as the start of a catalogue of the collection, and they play a crucial role in the reconstruction of the lost Gallery. The ethnologist Georg Forster (cf. Cat. No. 263), companion of James Cook during his circumnavigation of the world and son-in-law of the scholar of Antiquities Christian Gottlob Heyne from Göttingen was among those who visited the Wallmoden Gallery,5 as was Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (cf. Cat. No. 281). In 1772, Johann Gottfried Herder told Prince Peter Friedrich von Holstein-Gottorp about his wish to visit Count Wallmoden’s Gallery of Antiques and Pictures; Herder in 1771 mentioned his hopes in a letter to his fiancée “at least to find some refinement of the soul at the Wallmoden Collection.”6 With the Gallery’s sale by auction in September 1818 an abrupt end was put to this prospect. Since then many taunts have been made about a presumed indifference towards or even repudiation of the visual arts in Hanover. This auction marked, not the formation of an art collection of even comparable quality, but on the contrary the dispersal of Count Wallmoden’s Gallery as both the most prominent and the most inglorious event in the cultural life of Hanover in the first decades of the 19th century. In 1819, one year after the dispersal of the collection, August Kestner, who was staying in Rome (cf. Cat. No. H 106 and H 101), saw the necessity “to awaken taste” The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn Illus. 1 Anton von Maron Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn and his First Wife Charlotte Christiane, neé von Wangenheim around 1769 (Cat. No. H 71) and to “abate the barbarianism there concerning art” by planning an art gallery in Hanover, to which, in addition to the paintings he had acquired in Italy, as Kestner confided his hopes to his sister Charlotte, “the Wallmoden Gallery of Statues bought by the Prince Regent” would at least be able to contribute.7 And in 1832, the reviewer of the Catalogues of the Hausmann Picture Collection was still scoffing at the contemporary cultural landscape in Hanover in rather unflattering words: “as is generally known [. . .] the fine arts” are “rather at a disadvantage in the country of the Leine and the Ihme”;8 but there was at least one exception “in the midst of this vast artistic desert”, the “green oasis”, namely the Hausmann Picture Collection. This was “due to the appreciation of art by an affluent citizen” – yet the industrialist Bernhard Hausmann (cf. Cat. No. 455) on his own admission had laid its foundation by the acquisition of large parts of the Wallmoden Gallery.9 23 8 | 23 9 Illus. 2 Diederich Christian Ludewig Witting Plan and Elevation of the Wallmoden Palace March 1818 (Cat. No. H 9) Lichtenberg wrote from Göttingen in 1786 to his nephew that with Count Ernst Georg August von Wallmoden, the eldest son of Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden, he had someone “who would one day be the richest man in the country” among the one hundred students at his lecture of physics.10 In 1811, the year Wallmoden died, apparently these legendary riches were exhausted. In the Morgenblatt fuer gebildete Staende, art critic Basilius von Ramdohr remarked on January 17th 1812: “The Collection of the Count Wallmoden: too well-known to talk about at length; equally interesting for its antique statues as its paintings of the Italian school. I have reason to believe that this collection would be, especially in its entirety, to be had.”11 Two years after Wallmoden’s death, in 1813, the dispersal of his collections began with the sale of the library of 8,000 volumes to his grandnephew, the Viceroy Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge.12 The dactyliotheca by James Tassie, today at the Archaeological Institute in Göttingen, which might have arrived there during Heyne’s times, is presumably also of Wallmoden provenance.13 In 1818 the sale of Wallmodenpalais (Illus. 2) to King George IV (cf. Cat. No. 379) as recorded by Diederich Christian Ludewig Witting followed – complete with the sculptures it contained. In the same year the Hanoverian Court Painter Johann Heinrich Ramberg (cf. Cat. No. 252) assembled an auction catalogue with 549 paintings from the Wallmoden Gallery listed under 533 numbers (cf. Cat. No. H 11).14 This auction catalogue and over 30 drawings probably made by Huck15 in preparation for a collection catalogue illustrated with reproduction graphics but never completed, or not preserved, are essentially the only sources for our knowledge of the stock of pictures in the Wallmoden Gallery. In September 1818 the picture collection was sold off in its entirety. The auction proceeded sluggishly and because of too-low bids there were numerous repurchases by the Wallmoden family, probably also due to the poor condition of some of the collection paintings.16 Furthermore “This auction incidentally proved,” Hausmann remembered in 1873, “how low the appreciation of visual art was here at the time.”17 At least 70 works went until the 1830s to the aforementioned Bernhard Hausmann, art collector and co-founder of the Kunstverein Hannover, as the founding stock for his gallery. In 1857, during his lifetime and in fear of its dispersal after his death, Hausmann transferred the The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn collection to King Georg V of Hanover. The annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover by Prussia after the battle of Langensalza in 1866 brought the collection to the Fideikommiss Gallery, which was broken up in individual sales and two auctions in 1925 and 1926.18 Just over 30 paintings from the former Wallmoden Gallery arrived via these tortuous paths at today’s State Museum (Landesmuseum) in Hanover. According to the handwritten notes in the Album Kielmansegg, fifteen works went to the picture collection of Count Ernst Friedrich Herbert zu Münster at Schloss Derneburg near Hildesheim in September 1818, at least nine works to the collection of Count Georg Wilhelm zu Schaumburg-Lippe at Schloss Bückeburg. An assortment of slightly over twenty works has been preserved in private hands; the rest are scattered. About one-fourth of the approximately 550 works of the dismembered Wallmoden Gallery could up till now be identified as copies after well known masterpieces, by reference to the drawings in the Album Kielmansegg, on the basis of photographies, and so forth, at least regarding their appearance. The locations of about 80 of these works are currently known; since 1818 they have been distributed in both public and private collections all over the world.19 The Composition of the Collection The Gallery of Count Wallmoden was, compared to its contemporaries – the collections of Count Ernst Friedrich Herbert zu Münster at Schloss Derneburg20 and Duke Georg Wilhelm zu Schaumburg-Lippe at Schloss Bückeburg or the picture collection of Baron Johann Friedrich Moritz von Brabeck at Schloss Söder near Hildesheim – the most outstanding collection in the region. It was an inherent part of the interior of the Palace built on the periphery of Hanover by Wallmoden and surrounded by an English Garden, among the first of its kind in Germany.21 Besides the western wing as an independent gallery building, another constructional characteristic announced the ambitiousness of the collection housed therein: In the course of the construction of the palace Wallmoden inserted an octagonal hall into the floor plan as a distinctive element;22 towards the garden side this hall protruded as a prominent “three-eighths” bay from the façade (Illus. 2; cf. Cat. No. H 10). Within an order of rooms designed to house works of art, an octagonal room served to highlight the most rare or outstanding pieces; a fine example is the octagonal gallery hall known as the Tribuna in the Uffizi Gallery, which Bernardo Buontalenti had constructed for Francesco I de’ Medici in the late 1580s and which held the most outstanding antiques and paintings of the Medicis’ art collection. In the famous painting by Johann Joseph Zoffany, the collection in the Tribuna in the 1770s – hence exactly from the time of the composition of the Wallmoden collection in Hanover – is precisely documented; it shows its juxtaposition of antique sculptures with Italian and Flemish masterpieces of the 16th and 17th centuries (Illus. 3).23 We should bear in mind the Wallmodenpalais octagonal along with the western wing as a separate gallery edifice as reference points for the reconstruction of the Wallmoden Collection’s display presented below. On 6 and 20 April and 27 May 1767 the Vatican granted Count Wallmoden numerous export permits for Antique sculptures and paintings.24 In addition to the purchases made in Venice and Rome, Wallmoden also acquired the Berkelmann Collection in Braunschweig, the Girod Collection in Geneva and the collection of Siffredy de Mornas in Avignon among others.25 In total, Ramberg’s 1818 auction catalogue lists 549 paintings, and the catalogues by Rudolf Erich Raspe from 1767 and from 1781 by an anonymous author mention about 90 works from Antiquity or at least considered to be antique. Half of the works in the inventory are gallery paintings with a surface of more than 0.4 m2, the others are paintings in cabinet format (i.e. smaller than 0.4 m2). The largest is the copy of The Marriage at Cana by Veronese (Cat. No. H 59), today still in Guelph possession, which with the 24 0 | 241 Illus. 3 Johann Joseph Zoffany The Tribuna of the Uffizi, Florence 1772–1778, oil on canvas The Royal Collection, Windsor Castle The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn measurements mentioned by Ramberg of 7 feet 6 inches in height and a width of 10 feet (218.7 × 291.6 cm) has a surface of 6.38 m2.26 The average size of all 549 paintings (0.7 m2) by far exceeds the median value of the Wallmoden Gallery; thus when exhibited together, the paintings with a surface of over 0.7 m2, a little more than a quarter of the inventory, and the remaining threequarters of smaller pictures of the collection present an almost exponentially gradated inventory of many small pictures against a few very large and unwieldy works. This composition of the collection shall be mentioned later with regard to their display. As would be expected, all the recognised genres were represented in the Wallmoden Gallery. Two per cent are allegories, a little less than a third of the collection’s works depict history, whereby mythology accounts for 4 % of the complete inventory, antiquity 1 %, Biblical events and images of saints almost a fifth and – surprisingly few especially for the art collection of a military general – 4 % are representations of battles (Cat. No. H 42).27 The third type, the portrait, represents a little over a fifth of the whole inventory, Genre painting just over a tenth (Cat. No. H 83), animal painting 4 % (Cat. Nos. H 75, H 85, H 87 and H 91), still-life 8 % (Cat. No. H 33), maritime art 4 % (Cat. No. H 22) and landscape painting just under a quarter. If one subsumes the genres mentioned here into general groups, then historical depictions and landscapes balance each other with a third each, whereby even by itself such a high percentage of landscape paintings in a Baroque collection is surprising. Probably the emphasis on landscape pictures stood in some connection with Wallmoden’s interest in the state-of-the-art design of his English Garden. Presumably in the multitude of the portraits, constituting one fifth of the gallery, a need for genealogical recognition can be perceived, and the last fifth is shared inconspicuously by Genre pictures and still-life. The distribution of the sujets shall be mentioned further down. Regarding geographical distribution, the noticeably high proportion of landscape paintings has an impact; one-third of the paintings in the Wallmoden Collection were painted by Dutchmen. If one adds the Flemish with almost 15 % nearly half the collection consists of Netherlandish works. This reflects, besides aspects of contemporary taste, the proximity of the regions of origin as well as the availability of such works. A third of the pictures are from the hand of Italian painters, with (as is to be expected) a strong predominance of the Venetian school, followed by Bologna and other parts of Northern Italy, Rome and, with a small share, Naples. The works of Florentine masters represent only 1 % of the Collection of Count Wallmoden – an aspect to which due to this surprisingly low number great significance can be attributed regarding the display discussed further down. Paintings from France make up 12 %, Germany 3 % and England 2 % of the collection, works attributed to old German and old Dutch masters 3 %, among these a Saint Jerome (Heiliger Hieronymus) from the 16th century (Cat. No. H 55). Art works from Wallmoden’s two ‘homelands’ comprise only a small part of his collection, which again indicates the programme of the Gallery in terms of a representative princely collection where compared to pictures from Italy and Flanders those of German or English origin are of lesser significance. This assessment is further supported by the fact that among the works counted as Dutch and French many were then attributed to artists painting in a style with Italian influences like Asselyn, Poussin and Moucheron. Hence there is a large share of representative Italian or Italian-style Baroque paintings, and on the other hand a large number of Dutch landscape pictures and still-lifes. Methodically, the geographical classification given here is based on Ramberg’s attribution of the pictures even where, as in the case of the Portrait of a Man, (Illus. 4) this had to be corrected later. Thus the portrait ascribed to Hans Holbein the Younger28 in the Wallmoden Gallery turned out really to be the work of a pupil of Perugino’s. But of course regarding Count Wallmoden’s collecting interests the provenance of the works of art assessed today is unimportant in contrast to that supposed by Wallmoden himself. For the same reason we need not be distressed 242 | 243 Illus. 4 Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci, called Pietro Perugino (school) Portrait of a Man 1490s (Cat. No. H 30) Illus. 5 Bust of a Private Citizen around 98–117 AD (Cat. No. H 31) about the high number of copies in the collection; on the contrary they are highly relevant for answering the question of Wallmoden’s predilections: They had been bought or even commissioned where the originals could not be obtained for the collection and where their absence was perceived as a lacuna. This procedure and its outcome in the Gallery indicate that Wallmoden did follow a collecting strategy and place this above the quality of a particular work. Finally one can ask about the dates of birth of the artists represented in the Collection; here also what has been said regarding ascription and copying applies. Half of the paintings are by artists from the 17th century and only 5 % of the artists were born in the same century as Wallmoden. The date of birth of about one-tenth of the artists lies in the 15th century, of at least one-third in the 16th. The Display of the Wallmoden Collection The reconstruction of the display is hampered by the fact that we have no direct source of information for this in pictures or text. It seems that the numbering of the 549 paintings from 1 to 533 occurred during the process of taking inventory. This can be concluded from a handwritten remark in the Album Kielmansegg to an Ecce Home by Carlo Dolci (this of all works is not mentioned at all by Ramberg) according to which this work was “not present at inventory” and “therefore” remained “without No.”.29 Hence this note presupposes a numbering undertaken only at Ramberg’s inventory in 1818, which, however, due to a temporary removal of the painting from the collection, did not include the work by Dolci retained in the drawing; nevertheless the picture was offered at auction in 1818. Generally the question should be asked about the structuring impulse of the catalogue by Ramberg, and especially whether Ramberg’s listing has any systematic relation to the inventory of the Wallmoden Gallery found in 1818 and the arrangement of the works of art it housed. In order to understand the structure of the catalogue, the drawings after the paintings of the Gallery should be consulted. Thirty-four such drawings have been preserved in the Album Kielmansegg, and in one case30 (Illus. 6) the execution in the mezzotint engraving technique preferred by Huck has also been The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn Illus. 6 Johann Gerhard Huck (attributed) Expulsion of Hagar by Pietro da Cortona Album Kielmansegg, around 1800 (Cat. No. H 5) passed down (cf. Cat. No. H 7). The drawing in the Album Kielmansegg as well as the mezzotint sheet shows the Expulsion of Hagar 31 ascribed to Pietro da Cortona, listed in the auction catalogue by Ramberg, of which a negative originating from around 1900 also exists in the archive of the State Museum in Hanover; the work itself is lost. With one exception32 all the drawings pasted into the Album Kielmansegg can be related to a corresponding position in the auction catalogue. In addition there is a chalk drawing from the art trade (cf. Cat. No. H 92) and a mezzotint sheet by Huck for which no original drawing is known.33 If one compares the list of the works reproduced in the 35 drawings and the mezzotint with the list given in the auction catalogue then (with one exception)34 significant groupings become visible among the drawings and the mezzotint by Huck. However, these groupings are not reflected in the drawings’ order in the Album Kielmansegg, but become visible only by comparing the auction catalogue with the drawings. The groups of works appearing are thus, with the exception of one group of landscape paintings, not sorted thematically. Four groups contain four or five works,35 but another holds sixteen, whereby almost half of the drawings fall under less than a tenth of the positions listed in the auction catalogue.36 And these again are precisely the first 44 works listed in the auction catalogue. This group shall be mentioned again. Giulio Mancini in his Considerazioni sulla pittura of 1620 presents his recommendations for displaying a gallery ordered by “the epochs, the matters and the lighting”; the structural characteristics of collection catalogues from the 18th century that have come down to us also lead a reader of Ramberg’s auction catalogue expect to find a sorting of the listed paintings either by names of artists in alphabetical order, in an aggregation of works by geographical area, in a grouping of the pictures by sujets, or in the sequence of their display in the exhibition.37 As can easily be seen, Ramberg did not choose an alphabetical sorting of the 549 paintings of the Wallmoden Gallery, nor did he obviously strive for an order of the works according to their geographical origins – which could either have been found in the exhibition and thus reflected in Ramberg’s list or created especially in his list.38 In the text of the listing, furthermore, there is no explicit order of the list according to genre, with the exception that at the end of the list the numbers 473 to 533 are rubricated under the genre identification ‘Portraete’; yet portraits can also be 24 4 | 245 Illus. 7 Anton Friedrich Harms Designation der Mahlerey zu Saltz-Dahlen 1739–1741, ink drawing Herzog Anton UlrichMuseum Braunschweig, Kunstmuseum des Landes Niedersachsen found everywhere else in the list, so that the portrait rubric at its end decidedly does not contain or even aim at an exclusive listing of the portraits in the Wallmoden Gallery. Incidentally the list of portraits given at the end of Ramberg’s catalogue is initiated by “Thirteen portraits of beautiful French Ladies [. . .,] painted all in the French manner most delightfully.”39 In Salzdahlum, the 1813 demolished pleasure palace of the Guelphs from the last quarter of the 17th century, the connecting tract between the Small Gallery and the Corps de Logis, thus the architectural connection between rooms dedicated to art and those for public ceremonial,40 also were decorated by pictures of “the most beautiful Ladies of France”, while “portraits of the most beautiful Venetian Ladies”41 adorned the antechamber between the dining hall and the main gallery. The portrait paintings mentioned by Ramberg may have had an analogous function. The same actually applies to a noticeable accumulation of animal portraits and kitchen scenes listed in a rear section of the auction catalogue (cf. Cat. No. H 33).42 A concentration of “all sorts of depictions/ of game and such/ which belongs to the kitchen [. . .]” in a chamber adjacent to the kitchen in Salzdahlum43 corresponds to this. Hence it can be stated that Ramberg did not organise the catalogue by artists, schools or sujets, epochs or size of the listed works. Thus, where still an accumulation of one of those categories occurs, this may depict a display order found by the creator of the list during his perambulations through the Wallmodenpalais and hence ‘imported’ into his list. Finally, something that is missing is an explicit marking of a sequence of rooms imaged by the list of the catalogued art works, as for example the painter Anton Friedrich Harms gave in 1744 in his handwritten Designation of the Artfull and Prescious Paintings Which Find Themselves in the Galleries and Cabinetts of the Princely Pleasure=Palace Salzthalen (Designation derer künstlichen und kostbahren Gemählden welche in denen Gallerien und Cabinetter des fürstlichen Lust= Schlosses Salzthalen sich befinden). Harms also sketched the wall layouts of the gallery rooms in The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn Salzdahlum, on which he marked the outlines of all the paintings displayed in the rooms (Illus. 7).44 That Wallmoden wished his gallery as a place for the contemplation of art in the Ancien Régime also to become famous far beyond Hanover by means of a catalogue45 is substantiated by the existence of the drawings of almost 80 antique and modern works from his art collection kept in the Album Kielmansegg. Yet this intended catalogue would have documented less the practical exhibition of the works in the Gallery than the works individually. Therefore the question is whether Ramberg’s order of the pictures in his list is based on an excursion through the Gallery for exactly this purpose, and whether thus in its numbering the list represents a record of such an excursion. The catalogue was intended for the auction in the Wallmodenpalais and the following sale in September 1818 and as a resource was supposed to guide potential buyers through the Palace; what would suggest itself more plausibly than to find this excursion also depicted in the sequence of the works listed? So, how did Ramberg proceed in creating the auction catalogue? Did he wander from room to room? Then why did he not note any identification of the rooms, but only a numbering from 1 to 533 of the 549 paintings found there? Had the pictures perhaps been given labels by Ramberg, which corresponded to the numbering of his list given in the auction catalogue? To support the hypothesis that Ramberg’s listing may mimic the display of the Wallmoden Gallery, first arguments can be put forward which arise from the list itself. For instance, with the numbers 116 and 124, 323 and 330, 344 and 377 as well as 358 and 382 it recognises eight paintings which are marked as correspondents over the numbering of the works lying in between. This differs from the convention of the list of indicating correspondents by pairing them with numbers following directly upon each other under one rubric, as happened in no less than 67 cases. If Ramberg in the four mentioned cases departs from this rule and precisely does not give these pairs directly consecutive numbers in his listing, then this points to a spatially separated display of the eight mentioned correspondents and a closer display of the 67 pairs of pictures with directly consecutive numbers. In addition to this argument there is the abovementioned congruency of Ramberg’s list with the choice of paintings by Huck as models for his drawings and mezzotints. Hence the following considerations would not disallow the hypothesis that when he created the list printed in the auction catalogue, Ramberg actually left a perceivable order, namely, that in list follows the sequence of rooms as he walked through them in 1818. Now we should remember the constructional particularities of Wallmodenpalais, especially the ‘Tribuna’ and the west wing as a discrete gallery building. With about 550 paintings and up to 90 antiques, more than 600 positions had to be housed. As is well known, since its first appearance in Antwerp at the beginning of the 17th century the contiguity of the picture wall as cabinet d’amateur show it determined the designing of gallery rooms.46 Here the question has to remain open whether for Wallmodenpalais the Baroque display edge to edge as in Zoffany’s painting of the Florentine Tribuna (Illus. 3) or in copper engravings after Ramberg at the Royal Academy in London (cf. Cat. Nos. H 12 and H 13) can be assumed, or a display as documented by Mecheln for the Bilderhaus in Düsseldorf and even more strongly by Harms for Schloss Salzdahlum, namely one structured and harmonised with the architectonic elements of the gallery rooms (Illus. 7). But interestingly, on Harms’s sheet not only the display of the paintings in the rooms of Salzdahlum can be seen but also their continuous numbering along the spatial progression of the wall – thus, assigned in the way which at present we also assume for Ramberg’s auction catalogue. An addition of all the measurements given by Ramberg in the catalogue results in a total painted surface of pictures of almost 370 m2. If one supposes a Baroque display of the pictures (edge to edge) on the walls of the Gallery in the western wing of Wallmodenpalais alone considerably more than a third of the inventory could be housed; in Schloss Salzdahlum, as in the 24 6 | 247 Düsseldorfer Bilderhaus, pictures were displayed even on the folding window shutters.47 Hence, extrapolating on the wall area of the entire Wallmodenpalais there was certainly sufficient space. If now one correlates the particular sizes of pictures with the numbers assigned in Ramberg’s list, a significant concentration of large, very large, and the largest pictures is to be found among the first 150 works listed in the auction catalogue. Among these there are, with the copy of Veronese’s Marriage at Cana (cf. Cat. No. H 59) as well as six other paintings measuring 3 m2 at least,48 such works which could be adequately presented or even housed only in the western wing. The considerable variation in size within this field is illuminated by a glance at Zoffany’s Tribuna painting (Illus. 3), showing the complementary juxtaposition of very large and very small pictures of the display of comparable galleries. Transferred into a list, for the situation in the Florentine Tribuna Illus. 8 Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez Portrait of a Man 1630–1635, oil on canvas formerly Wallmoden Collection. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art as presented in Zoffany’s painting there would be the same conspicuous variations upwards and downwards as can be seen in Ramberg’s listing. But after the first 150 positions this distinctive first part radically ends, and a clearly differing significant sector of about 280 paintings follows, of which only a dozen are larger than 1 m2, but most even smaller than the median (0,4 m2) of the collection. The last area with the remaining approx. 120 positions, among them the group of mostly large portraits mentioned by Ramberg, again includes large and also some very large paintings. Within such a pattern it seems plausible to identify, in the second field of Ramberg’s auction list containing 280 positions, the display in the smaller residential and other rooms of the Wallmodenpalais. The significant field of the first 150 works listed in the auction catalogue can be assumed to be the display in the Gallery building of the west wing – and of another room which can be discovered by a further analysis of the first field. For, as can be shown, within this field another significant sub-group emerges, containing the first approx. 40 positions of Ramberg’s auction catalogue; thus it consists of the same 40 works which already comprised this group in the interpolation of the auction catalogue with the drawings and mezzotints by Huck. The significance of this smaller field of Ramberg’s listing is first of all its obvious accumulation of pictures in portrait format. Regarding the total inventory of the Wallmoden Gallery there is an equal number of portrait (higher than they are wide) and landscape (wider than they are high) formats. Yet among the first 40 works of the listing, the portrait formats outnumber the landscape formats by three to one. For a possible explanation of this state of affairs we should remember the second peculiarity of Wallmodenpalais besides the west wing being an independent gallery building, namely its octagonal room, the Wallmoden ‘Tribuna’ (Illus. 2). This room offers about 40 m2 of wall area not counting possible displays on the folding window shutters as in Schloss Salzdahlum and the Düsseldorfer Bilderhaus; the first 40 paintings of Ramberg’s auction catalogue require precisely this much space. Because of the many windows in the room and the three doors accessing the palace from this room – from the Tribuna, only two rooms need to be passed in order to reach the Gallery in the western wing, among them, with the room positioned in front of the west wing at a right angle, the largest room of the Corps de Logis – mostly narrow wall areas are available, something which favours the display of portrait format paintings. Moreover, the significant accumulation of history pictures of Italian provenance among the first 40 paintings supports the hypothesis that in them we can recognise the paintings of the display in the Wallmoden Tribuna. This is evidenced even more strongly by the extraordinarily high concentration of paintings by artists born in the 15th and 16th century. As mentioned earlier, half of Wallmoden’s paintings were created by artists whose year of birth lay in the 17th century; but the paintings of these artists are decidedly underrepresented among the first 40 listed in the auction catalogue, comprising only one fifth. However, a third of the first 40 paintings are from artists who were born in the 15th century, 40 % by those were born in the 16th century – yet within the whole Wallmoden inventory, pictures by artists born so early make up less than a tenth (15th century) respectively slightly over a third (16th century). To the visitor of an art collection, the pictures of the late 15th and early 16th century provided colourful instruction on the reawakening of Antiquity in Renaissance painting, for example by means of juxtaposing the picture of a man, today at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, ascribed to a pupil of Perugino from the 1490s (Illus. 4) with the many Antique busts of Emperors in the former Wallmoden Gallery, such as for example the bust assumed to be a likeness of Trajan by Raspe (Illus. 5). Through a direct comparison of the early paintings with the Antique sculptures positioned next to them, the viewer could clearly discern the epochal threshold of the Renaissance. Yet especially in the art of Italy of the early 17th and 18th century, according to the judgment of Wallmoden’s time, the emulation of the Antique works had reached its apotheosis. Simultaneously it was important to assert the moral superiority of the Christian age, on the one hand over Pagan Antiquity, and on the other theologically over Judaism. While the relation between Antiquity and the Modern period will be mentioned further down, taking the example of the Sleeping Eros (cf. Cat. No. H 37) and the Sleeping Christ Child (Illus. 15; cf. Cat. No. H 36), here the theological argument of the supersession of the Jewish religion by Christianity may briefly be mentioned, as elaborated in the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians49 using the example of Abraham’s relationship to the slave Hagar and her repudiation by him – a very popular motif in Baroque painting; in the display in the Tribuna of the Uffizi (Illus. 3) by Zoffany, the Return of Hagar by Pietro da Cortona which came to Vienna in 1792 (today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum) can be seen. Close to da Cortona’s painting, a central object lesson in Christian ethics was displayed with Bartolomeo Manfredi’s The Tribute to Caesar 50. In Wallmoden’s Tribuna according to the display 24 8 | 24 9 The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn Illus. 9 Johann Gerhard Huck (attributed) Archimedes with the Allegorical Figures War and Peace by Giovan Battista Langetti Album Kielmansegg, around 1800 (Cat. No. H 5) reconstructed here, the aforementioned Expulsion of Hagar ascribed to Carlo Maratta and Pietro da Cortona was displayed (Illus. 6),51 and next to it with the painting of Jesus and the Woman taken in Adultery by a pupil of Rocco Marconi52 another example of Christianity overcoming Pharisee orthodoxy. Beyond the technical attributes of the pictures53 this example already indicates a programmatic correlation of the two displays in Florence and Hanover. If one looks at the remaining pictures and antiques of the Uffizi Tribuna as shown in Zoffany’s painting, in most cases thematic correspondences with the exhibition in the Wallmoden Tribuna in Hanover can be found. Furthermore, here the relevant works cannot only be found almost exclusively among the first 40 of the paintings given in Ramberg’s list, but mostly they were also used as models for drawings contained in the Album Kielmansegg, to mention but a few here: Annibale Carracci’s Venus with Satyr and Cupid in Florence, which corresponds to Paolo Veronese’s Nymph and Satyr with Sleeping Cupid in Hanover (Illus. 17 and 18),54 Raffael’s Madonna della Sedia in Florence corresponding to Andrea del Sarto’s or rather Domenico Puligo’s55 Maria with Child and the Young St John in Hannover,56 Justus Sustermans’ portrait of Galileo Galilei to Velázquez’s Portrait of a Man (Illus. 8).57 Peter Paul Rubens’s Florentine Allegory of the Horrors of War corresponds to Langetti’s Archimedes with the Allegorical Figures War and Peace in Hanover (Illus. 9).58 The Florentine Portrait of Sir Richard Southwell by Hans Holbein the Younger accords with the Portrait of a Man, today in New York and ascribed to a pupil of Pietro Perugino but in the collection of Count Wallmoden still listed as a work of Hans Holbein the Younger (Illus. 4);59 then again displayed directly next to the Florentine Holbein was a Portrait of Perugino by Lorenzo di Credi, to which the picture by the Perugino pupil in New York just mentioned can likewise be associated. Guido Reni’s Cleopatra in Florence takes either Saint Barbara by Parmigianino at Wallmoden’s (Illus. 10),60 the Maria Magdalena Repentant by Guido Reni,61 or Pietro Liberi’s Antonius and Cleopatra (cf. Cat. No. H 20)62 as its counterpart. To Rubens’ Four Philosophers Salvator Rosa’s painting of the Philosopher Diogenes, throwing away his drinking Bowl corresponds,63 with Allori’s Florentine Saint Julian’s Hospitality Wallmoden is juxtaposed the newly discovered Saint Francis in Ecstasy by Bernardo Strozzi (Illus. 11).64 But another correspondence of two works which should be mentioned here does more than further emphasise the Florentine Tribuna as the model for the creation of its Wallmoden counterpart. Johann Zoffany, besides being the painter of the Tribuna picture, as an art dealer also was engaged in supplying the European nobility on the ‘Grand Tour’ with works of art for their collections at home. In his painting Zoffany is conducting such a sales conversation with George Nassau Clavering-Cowper, the 3rd Earl Cowper (Illus. 3) in the middle ground of the picture far to the left side. The object of their negotiations is the work also visible in the painting that later received the name of its buyer, Raffael’s Niccolini-Cowper Madonna.65 Wallmoden too, like Cowper travelling on the Grand Tour, purchased a painting attributed to Raffael,66 Maria with Christ and the Young St John,67 which according to the number assigned to it in the auction catalogue should be considered as a picture displayed in a prominent position in the Wallmoden Tribuna. Zoffany created his painting of the Tribuna on the commission of Charlotte, the wife of George III, who was a half-nephew of Count Wallmoden (cf. Cat. No. 211). Zoffany concluded the sale of the Niccolini-Cowper Madonna depicted here with Cowper, the godson of King George II (the biological father of Count Wallmoden); Cowper in turn had bought the picture on behalf of George III. Thus by the choice and display of his pictures, Wallmoden subtly adorned his collection programmatically along his ideas of dynastic and genealogical entitlement, as he did much more obviously with the ‘axis of honour’ portrait gallery of Guelph and other potentates.68 The painting displayed prominently in the Wallmoden Gallery first ascribed to Titian then to Giorgione69 of Two Lovers (Illus. 12; cf. Cat. No. H 8) had a strange fate. Hausmann, who bought the picture in 1818, gives it pride of place in his inventory catalogue and wordily admires „the most The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn Illus. 10 Johann Gerhard Huck (attributed) Saint Barbara by Parmigianino Album Kielmansegg, around 1800 (Cat. No. H 5) famous picture” of his collection70 as a work of Giorgione, the “rare master of the highest blooming of Venetian Art”.71 After an odyssey through the hands of the Guelph and into the Fideikommiss Gallery, in the end the painting languished in a cabinet room of the Museum of the Province of Hanover as a copy after Giacomo Palma il Vecchio. In 1924 its value was estimated at 600 Marks,72 in 1926 it was finally auctioned; its whereabouts are unknown. The Themes and Composition of the Wallmoden Collection The search for and acquisition of the antiquities and paintings for the Gallery of Count Wallmoden was conducted among others by the German antiquarian and art agent Johann Friedrich Reiffenstein, the Italian sculptor and restorer Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, the Belgian landscape painter Nicolas Henri Joseph de Fassin, the British painter, art collector, banker and antiquities dealer Thomas Jenkins and the British painter, archaeologist and art dealer Gavon Hamilton.73 Yet Wallmoden received his archaeological and art historical advice for the composition of his collection from Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who had been appointed general Prefect of Antiquities in Rome in 1763 by Pope Clemens XIII and was not only personally acquainted with many of the abovementioned art dealers and sculptors but was also a favourite companion in Rome for many ‘Grand Tour’ travellers of the European royal houses (Illus. 13). The Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes being fought in France since the reign of Louis XIV, the disagreement on precedence 25 0 | 251 Illus. 13 Anton von Maron Johann Joachim Winckelmann 1768, oil on canvas Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Schlossmuseum im Residenzschloss Weimar between Ancient and Modern, received an enormous impetus in Germany by Winckelmann’s Gedanken ueber die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Malerey und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture) published in Dresden in 1755 with a second edition in 1756. This epochal work quasi as programmatic writing is of decisive significance for the selection and arrangement of the Wallmoden collection. One example is Winckelmann’s persistently reiterated demand, according to which “there is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled”, namely “by imitating the antients”, and this indeed with the purpose to find “the rules of art.”74 This exhortation gives further support to the hypothesis concerning the display of the Wallmoden Collection; for, as already mentioned, among the first slightly over 40 numbers of Ramberg’s auction catalogue, hence among the pictures presumably in the Wallmoden Tribuna, there is clearly a significant accumulation of paintings which at the time were attributed to Renaissance artists compared with the remaining 500 works. Besides, in Winckelmann’s volume Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (History of the Art of Antiquity) published in 1764, he says about the ”Origin of Art and Reason for Its Diversity among Peoples” that speaking of the natural talent of the Greeks of Antiquity for art, he definitely does not want to deny “that this ability might be found among a few or many other peoples”, since only “experience teaches otherwise. Holbein and Albrecht Dürer, the fathers of art in Germany, displayed an astonishing talent fort art, and if they could have studied the works of the ancients, as did Raphael, Correggio, and Titian, they could have become as great as these painters, or perhaps even surpassed them.”75 And with this thesis of Winckelmann76 the display of the already frequently cited painting first ascribed to Hans Holbein the Younger77 in the Wallmoden Tribuna also becomes plausible, which, quasi in an act of rationality’s cunning, in our day has turned out to be a work from the circle of Perugino, Raffael’s teacher (Illus. 4). If with Winckelmann the indispensability of Antique art for the formation of good taste could be made plausible, then this placed Count Wallmoden in the felicitous position of possessing with his collection, as widely praised as it was singular, an excellent transalpine exclave of Antique artistic creations; the exclusiveness of such an art treasure trove may have accommo- √Illus. 11 Bernardo Strozzi St Francis in Ecstasy around 1635 (Cat. No. H 97) dated Wallmoden’s wish for recognition enormously. To know the key to the path to “noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in Gesture and Expression” (“edle[r] Einfalt, und eine[r] stille[n] Groesse, so wohl in der Stellung als im Ausdrucke” ), the “last and most eminent characteristic of the Greek works”78 in his keeping undoubtedly corresponded to his ideal of a ‘fine courtier’.79 Wallmoden surrounded himself with his collection during the dawn of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s incursions to overturn the established political and social conditions in 252 | 253 The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn Illus. 12 After Giacomo Palma il Vecchio Two Lovers Photograph of the lost painting (Cat. No. H 8) Illus. 14 Johann Gerhard Huck (attrib.) Madonna with Sleeping Christ Child by Sassoferrato Album Kielmansegg, around 1800 (Cat. No. H 5) Illus. 15 Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato Madonna with Sleeping Christ Child (Cat. No. H 38) Illus. 16 Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato Madonna with Sleeping Christ Child Oil on canvas Museo Soumaya, Mexico City Europe, against which Wallmoden as a general held a not insignificant but hapless post. With the dismantling of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 Napoleon finally succeeded in overturning an order that had existed for centuries. The secularisation and chain of annexations connected with German mediatization (Reichsdeputationshauptschluss) of 1803 proved an irreversible turning point in European history. The extinction of the Ancien Régime and the pressures of a nascent new age inevitably brought with them the loss of the douceur de la vie, the sweetness of life, which according to Talleyrand’s famous words80 nobody could appreciate who had not lived before 1789. With his art collection Wallmoden as an equally glamorous and ruinous member of high society obviously hoped to be able to carry this sweetness over the threshold of the epoch into less joyful times. Wallmoden reflected intensely upon the danger to the nobility and its privileges in the period between revolution and restoration, as can be seen from the Systematisch-kritischen Verzeichniß der [. . .] ansehnlichen und kostbaren Sammlung von Büchern aus allen Fächern [. . .] der Wallmoden’schen Bibliothek (Systematic-critical Catalogue of the [. . .] Handsome and Precious Collection of Books on all Topics [. . .] of the Wallmoden Library) published in 1812 – this lists 400 titles concerned with the ‘European History of Revolutions of the last Decennia’ alone.81 Wallmoden’s gallery affirmed what he regarded as the natural world order and the maintenance of a world view passed down since time immemorial, while the multiplicity of the assembled works was perfect as a test of a connoisseur’s comparative faculties. In the Gallery of Count Wallmoden the paragone between the objects, the dispute about the rank of the epochs and genres, went right across the collection in the juxtaposition of Antique and Modern works of art as well as of sculpture and painting with Christian/sacral and Pagan/secular content. The collection offered countless impulses for scholarly conversations in front of the exhibited objects like those being conducted in Zoffany’s painting (Illus. 3). What Heinrich Wölfflin later contributed to the methodology of art history as ‘Vergleichendes Sehen’ (‘comparative viewing’) therefore not only contains a continuation of the concept of the ‘cabinet of wonders’ and the Baroque gallery, as it quasi still is contained in Kestner’s salon in Rome (cf. Cat. No. H 101) but bestows an unbroken actuality to the gallery created by Wallmoden during the Ancien Régime as a place for the contemplation of art. The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn Wallmoden’s contemporaries recognised and enjoyed the aesthetic advantage of the juxtaposition of Antiquity and Modernity offered in his collection. Herder, a visitor mentioned earlier, wrote in a letter of 1772 that he did not want to view the Wallmoden Gallery, currently only equipped with antique sculptures, immediately, but was “rather waiting for the collection of paintings and copperplate engravings which are supposed to arrive from Vienna in a little while.”82 Besides the possibility of exploring the differences in the artistic handling of problems as they can be found in the stylistic, motivic and compositional characteristics of the works, the collection offered numerous aspects for educating the discerning faculties through the programmatic display of the pictures – as the analogies mentioned above between the Tribuna in the Uffizi in Florence and its Wallmoden counterpart in Hanover elucidate. Yet the intellectual connections and the relations of content among the modern paintings and the antiques in the Wallmoden Gallery are too multitudinous to be listed anywhere near comprehensively here. Still, with two examples an insight into this dense network of iconographic relation shall be given. The transformation of the Antique typus of the sleeping Eros/Amor in its interpretatio Christiana to the sleeping Christ Child83 obviously awakened Wallmoden’s interest. As in the cases mentioned above, for Wallmoden’s antique Sleeping Eros (cf. Cat. No. H 37) also numerous concordant sculptures can be mentioned.84 One could pursue the Christianisation of the motif through many pictures prominently displayed in his gallery (cf. Cat. No. H 36).85 For identification with Sassoferrato’s Madonna with Sleeping Christ Child, of which we know not only from the auction catalogue of 1818 but also by a drawing in the Album Kielmansegg (Illus. 14), two paintings were available, on the one hand the example in the Galleria Estense in Modena (Illus. 15), on the other that in the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City (Illus. 16).86 But the vista of the landscape extending behind the right shoulder of the Mother of God provides certitude: The branches of the small trees crossing each other, the mountain in the background and the bushes in the right middle ground differ between the two paintings and only correspond in the version from Modena with those of the drawing in the Album Kielmansegg.87 The youthfulness of the antique Eros as well as of the Christ Child personifies the powerlessness of time concerning the Antique gods on the one hand and the logos incarnated in Christ 25 4 | 255 Illus. 18 Paolo Veronese Nymph and Satyr with Sleeping Eros around 1570, oil on canvas former Wallmoden Collection. Florence, Collezione Contini Bonacossi on the other.88 Furthermore, the latter’s legs being crossed indicates – as does the repetition of this cross motif in two trees in the background of Sassoferrato’s painting – the events of the Passion. Here Christ’s triumph over the world through his crucifixion juxtaposed to Sleeping Eros with his legs splayed out, whose weapon, the cudgel of Hercules, is being palpated by him even in his sleep. As the Sleeping Eros is resting on a lion’s skin, also an attribute of Heracles, spread rather like a cloth, Sassoferrato’s Sleeping Christ is bedded on a white drapery. Thereby the allusion to the cultural hero Heracles who usually defeats the menaces to mankind with brute force stands in manifest contrast to the redemptory work of Christ in the events of the Passion. Maria is lifting the veil under which the Christ Child is taking his nap – in salvific iconography anticipating Christ’s sleep of death – his left arm is depicted in the canonical posture of Christ’s arm during the lamentation of Christ – and thus allegorises the Church bearing witness to the revelation of the incarnate God. The crossed legs of the Christ Child typologise, like the crossed tree trunks, the death by crucifixion of Christ, while the Antique Eros is depicted uninhibited, legs akimbo. The physical juxtaposition of the Antique Pagan cornucopia of forms with the pictorial world of the Christian era reveals a contrast at a high aesthetic level about which a visitor of the Wallmoden Gallery one could hold fine conversations in front of the works of art. The Sleeping Eros, for whom no outrage seems impossible, meets the redeemer prefiguring his own sleep of death. With Paolo Veronese’s Nymph and Satyr with Sleeping Eros, present as a drawing in the Album Kielmansegg (Illus. 17)89 and as number 23 in the auction catalogue of 1818 obviously a painting from the Wallmoden Tribuna, the typus returns to its Antique origins. In a letter to Kaiser Maximilian II from 31 March 1571 the Imperial envoy to Venice, Veit von Dornberg, reports having seen a painting in the workshop of Veronese in which a Venus was depicted jesting with a satyr, 25 6 | 257 The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn √Illus. 17 Johann Gerhard Huck (attributed) Nymph and Satyr with Sleeping Eros by Paolo Veronese Album Kielmansegg, around 1800 (Cat. No. H 5) Illus. 19 Peter Paul Rubens Flemish Peasant Fair 1635–1638, oil on wood Musée du Louvre, Paris Illus. 20 School of Peter Paul Rubens Peasant Dance, detail 17th century (Cat. No. H 50) the two accompanied by a sleeping Cupid. In 1648 Veronese’s biographer Carlo Ridolfi mentioned a picture by the master in which Venus was represented with a grinning satyr and a Cupid as having been in the house of Veronese’s nephew Giuseppe Caliari.90 Purchased by Wallmoden for 2,200 ducats in Venice and described by Bernhard Hausmann as the “principle work’ in the Wallmoden Gallery, in 1818 it left Hannover for only 1,100 Taler91 and was auctioned at Christie’s in London on 16 March 1833. Presumably this is the painting which around the end of the 19th century left England and arrived in the Collezione Contini Bonacossi (Illus. 18).92 In this painting with the figure of the child dozing in a obscene posture, the initial Pagan pictorial formula comes full circle. In any case the distinctly unsaintly alliance of the nymph or The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn Venus and the satyr as well as a sleeping Cupid is set in provocatively stark contrast to the images of the Madonna, the Holy Family (cf. Cat. No. H 57) and a Sacra Conversazione surrounding them in the Wallmoden Tribuna.93 In this painting the conflict between Virtue and Vice is not treated in a complex pictorial content as in other allegories by Veronese94 but rather unfolds its programmatic effect, indicating far beyond the not-too-subtly displayed eroticism, as a frivolous element within the entirety of the Wallmoden Gallery. The antagonism between the Dionysian and the Apollonian elements advanced in the collection is also treated in a Peasant Dance from the Wallmoden Gallery (Illus. 20) assigned by Ramberg95 to the school of Rubens and partially to the master himself and today in private hands, which displays clear analogies with Rubens’ Flemish Peasant Fair in the Louvre96 (Illus. 19). Yet in contrast to the Parisian version, in the picture from the Wallmoden Gallery the feudal notion of the estates of the realm is explicitly reflected; indeed the arrangement known from Rubens’s Parisian Peasant Fair is extended in that the noble observer of the bucolic scene in the top right quarter is literally driving into the picture. In this painting, too, the Dionysian element recurs vigorously in the peasants’ boisterous dancing;97 but whereas in Rubens’s Parisian Peasant Fair to the right in the foreground, next to empty vessels being rummaged through by a dog, a pig’s snout – symbol of gluttony, selfishness and indulgence – is peeking out of a shabby plank shed, in the extended Wallmoden version of the theme at this juncture feudal society makes its appearance. While in the Parisian version a dog sticks its nose into a washing trough, in the Wallmoden version exactly there a coarsely grimacing peasant is about to offer a lady seated on the ground his company with gestures of rustic gallantry. The replacement of the metallic and wooden vessels by the incipient mésalliance here reminds one of the words of Paul: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have no charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal”98 – symbol of the disturbance of universal harmony as sustained by the perpetuation of the feudal society. But as in the Parisian version, in front there also is a plank shed with what could be a pig’s snout visible at the lower border of the picture. It can be expected that the educated viewer of this painting knew Rubens’s Parisian Peasant Fair, which arrived in the collection of Louis XIV in 1685, at least from reproductions and was able to read the modification in the Wallmoden version. Furthermore an accumulation of empty vessels is replaced by a group of nobles settled in the neighbourhood of the pigsty who show themselves not disinclined to a tryst with members of the Third Estate. What at first sight seems as a frivolous twist of a pictorial theme that otherwise rather increases the pleasure of what is beheld at the expense of the Peasant Estate, here being directed against the undoubtedly aristocratic viewer of the painting, can indeed also be seen as an admonition to moderation. The nobility, if only it knows how to resist any relaxation of the borders between the Estates, seems, as a stabilising element of society, to guarantee this God-given world order. Almost all the existential manifestations of life can be found assembled in allegory as archetypal “engrams of passionate experience” 99 in Wallmoden’s pictures. At the same time the Count’s Gallery shapes a cosmos that not only has a feudal Estates as its economic prerequisite, but also quasi declares this order to be the stabilising frame for the social regulation of such vital impulses. The harmony expressed by the selection of the works of art and their display transcends the incessant antagonism between the ubiquitous Dionysian and Apollonian aspects of the collection, and concurrently forms a pivot from the enlightened feudalism according to the façon of Count Wallmoden, instructed by Winckelmann, to the bourgeois thirst for education of a nascent 19th century that deems to have recognised art as a promesse du Bonheur: beauty solely as a promise of happiness for itself.100 Translation from the German S U S A N N E K E S S LE R 25 8 | 25 9 1 Amt 1996, here p. 76. 2 Fiorillo 1820, pp. 222 f.: “Unsere Stadt [Hannover], die bisher in Ruecksicht auf Kunst wenig beruehmt war, […] wo der Sinn fuer Kunst […] noch schlummerte […, hat] der geschickte und fleißige Kupferstecher Huck […] eine Kunstanstalt errichtet […;] fuer diesen schoenen Zweck [hat Wallmoden] den Gebrauch seiner besten Zeichnungen und Antiken großmuethig verstattet. […] Sehr erfreulich ist es zu sehen, […] daß die Soehne des Adels, wie der Buerger und auch der Judenschaft, gemeinschaftlich daran Theil nehmen. […] Mit Recht will auch das schoene Geschlecht im Kunstgeschmack nicht zurueckbleiben, und Herr Huck giebt schon mehreren jungen Frauenzimmern […] im Zeichnen Unterricht.” 3 Ballhorn 1798, here p. 360: “Vielleicht leitet der eifrige Sinn für schöne Kunst, der den Grafen [Wallmoden] belebt, und der jetzt einem schätzenswerthen Kuenstler, Herrn Huck aus Mannheim, den Auftrag verschafft hat, die schoensten Stuecke aus der ansehnlichen Gemaehldesammlung durch seinen Grabstichel zu vervielfaeltigen; vielleicht leitet dieser Sinn […] einmal dahin, auch seine Antikensammlung in Kupfer stechen […] zu lassen.” 4 My heartfelt thanks to Klaus Fittschen for kindly pointing out the Album Kielmansegg (in the following abbreviated AK). Fittschen is preparing a new catalogue of the sculptures of the Wallmoden Collection in cooperation with the Archäologisches Institut in Göttingen. 5 Forster 1829, p. 243. – Lichtenberg (vol. 2), pp. 599, 616 f. – Regarding Heyne and Wallmoden: Skulpturen 1979, pp. 22 f. 6 Herder 1988, p. 131: “[…] an der Wallmodenschen Sammlung mir wenigstens Ton der Seele zu geben”. – Herder 1977, pp. 60 f. 7 Correspondence 1904, p. 113: “[…] und so bringen wir noch in Hannover so viel zusammen, um den Geschmack zu wecken. Vielleicht lässt sich an die vom Prinz-Regenten gekaufte Wallmodensche Gallerie der Statuen eine bedeutende Kunstsammlung reihen, und auf jeden Fall wird die dortige Barbarei in Beziehung auf Kunst gemildert werden.” – Loeben 2013. – Andratschke 2013. 8 Hausmann 1832, here p. 143: “bekanntlich sind die schoenen Kuenste in dem Lande an der Leine und Ihme etwas zu kurz gekommen […]. Um so groeßere Aufmerksamkeit verdient es, daß der Kunstsinn eines wohlhabenden Bürgers inmitten dieser breiten Kunststeppe eine gruenende Oase geschaffen hat […].” 9 Hausmann 1831, pp. V–VI with Note 5. – Handwritten inventory by Bernhard Hausmann, Niedersächsisches Handschriftenarchiv, Stadtbibliothek Hannover. 10 Lichtenberg (vol. 4) 1994, pp. 672 f.: “den reichsten Mann dereinst im Lande”, also cf. p. 691. 11 Von Ramdohr 1812: “Die Sammlung des Grafen Wallmoden: zu bekannt, um weitlaeufig davon zu reden; gleich interessant durch die antiken Statuen und Gemaehlde der italienischen Schule. Ich habe Ursache zu glauben, daß diese Sammlung, besonders im Ganzen, zu erstehen waere.” 12 Krause 1990, here p. 24–26. 13 Daktyliotheken 2006, p. 164–166, No. 6 (Inv. No. A1358). – Knüppel 2006, here p. 29. 14 Ramberg 1818. The collection undoubtedly held more works, e.g. Cat. No. H 1 and AK 83r. 15 This ascription is based on the source situation cited and a juxtaposition of drawing and Huck’s completed mezzotint by Huck (Illus. 6 and Cat. No. H 7). 16 Petersen 2009, p. 48. – Hausmann 1873, p. 109. – Strube 1992, p. 114. 17 Hausmann 1873, p. 110: “Diese Auction bewies übrigens, wie gering damals der Sinn für bildende Kunst hier war.” 18 A list of the catalogues of the Königliches Welfen-Museums and the Fideikommiss-Galerie in: Landesgalerie 2000, S. 390 f. – Lepke 1925. – Cassirer/Helbing 1926. – Lastly: Works of art 2005. 19 The author is preparing a monograph on the Wallmoden Gallery in which the reconstruction of its former inventory shall be described in detail. My heartfelt thanks for indispensable suggestions and energetic support go, besides to the owners of former paintings of the Wallmoden Gallery who wish to remain unnamed, in alphabetic order to Thomas Andratschke (Hanover), Richard Aste (New York), Inke Beckmann (Göttingen), Richard Charlton Jones (London), Bastian Eclercy (Frankfurt a. M.), Federico Fischetti (Modena), Klaus Fittschen (Wolfenbüttel), Anne Grabowsky (Hanover), Johnny van Haeften (London), Kirsten Hinderer (Hanover), Antje-Fee Köllermann (Hanover), Cesare Lampronti (Rom), Katja Lembke (Hanover), Chiara Naldi (Lugano) and Miroslaw Wasicki (Toronto). 20 Strube 1991. – Strube 1992, p. 100–153. 21 Zurück zur Natur 1997. 22 Nds. HstAH Mappe 50, Bl. 17. – Amt 1996, p. 74 and 78, Illus. 2. 23 Oil on canvas, 123.5 × 54.9 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, Inv. No. RCIN406983. – Millar 1967. 24 Bertolotti 1877, here pp. 218 f. Heartfelt thanks to Klaus Fittschen for his kind reference to this source. 25 Raspe 1767, here p. 202 and 238. – Hausmann 1831, p. VI, note 5. – Brandes 1766. According to this Wallmoden bought among other pieces the now lost Sainte Geneviève by Carle Vanloo from 1740, which has survived only in a copperplate engraving by Jean-Joseph Balechou. The picture is listed as No. 13 in Ramberg’s auction catalogue and thus may have been a picture of the Walmoden Tribuna. – Oeser 1779, p. 13 (No. 46). 26 Ramberg’s Catalogue (in the following abbreviated as RC) 134. The measurements presumed here to improve comparability with the measures of other works whose whereabouts are at the moment unknown and whose measures thus cannot be compared are the result of converting the measures given in feet and inches by Ramberg into the metric system. Basis of the conversion are the Hannoverscher Fuß (foot): 29.21 cm as well as the Hannoverscher Zoll (inch): 2.43416 cm. The measurements of the work today are 212 × 301 cm. – Priever 1997, p. 170 (No. II.6). – Regarding dating the copy: Noces de Cana 1992, pp. 147–149 and 169–174. 27 While 1,000 of the total 8,000 volumes of Wallmoden’s library were dedicated to military science only 500 volumes had ‘Art and Antiquity’ as their subject. With 3,000 volumes, the focus of the library was on the History and Politics; Krause 1990, p. 25. 28 RC 39. 29 AK 83r: “bey Inventar nicht gegenwartig und daher ohne Nr.” 30 AK 86r. 31 RC 22. 32 AK 83r. 33 Landesmuseum Hannover, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. No. Gr. 2486, shown in RC 68. – Oeser 1779, p. 33 (No. 160). 34 RC 132, AK 95r. 35 RC 58, 60, 66, 68; RC 92, 96, 99, 100; RC 161, 165, 167, 168, 171 and RC 233, 234, 242, 246, 248 36 RC 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 17, 20, 22, 23, 25, 31, 32, 34, 37, 38, 44. 37 Mancini 1956, p. 5. – Stübel 1925, pp. 247–254 and 301–311. 38 While Count Wallmoden’s collection of copperplate engravings was ordered by schools; Raspe 1767, p. 203. – About displaying in terms of art landscapes see Gerkens 1974, p. 113. – Schönste der Welt 2013. – Baumstark 2009, here pp. 20 f. 39 RC 473–485: “Dreyzehn Porträte schöner Französinnen […,] sämmtlich in der lieblichen französischen Manier sehr reizvoll gemalt”. 40 Gerkens 1974, p. 125. 41 Querfurt 1710, p. B 2 and A [6]: “portraits der schoensten Venetianischen Dames”. 42 RC 317–358, Cat. No. H 33 (RC 86) yet does not belong to this group and is of much larger dimensions, too, so that a display in the The Art Collection of Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn gallery hall in the west wing can be presumed. 43 Querfurt 1710, p. A[5]: “allerhand Schildereyen/ von Wildpraet und dergleichen/ was zur Kueche gehoerig […]”. 44 Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Inv. No. H 5. – Anton Friedrich Harms: Designation der Mahlerey zu Saltz-Dahlen, 1739–1741, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Inv. No. H 4. 45 Wallmoden’s collection of copperplate engravings held such gallery works, Raspe 1767, p. 203. 46 Koch 1967, pp. 62 f. – Winner 1962. – Wettengl 2002, pp. 127–141. – Wallmoden’s collection of paintings also held a Kunstkammerbild (RC 219). 47 Baumstark 2009, p. 20. 48 RC 7, 44, 67, 68, 99, 134, 141, AK 65r, 80r, 82r. RC 68 exists in a print (graphical) reproduction by Huck, Landesmuseum Hannover, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. No. Gr. 2486. 49 Galater 4:21–31. 50 Regarding the paintings of the Tribuna mentioned here and in the following: Millar 1967. 51 RC 22, AK 86r. 52 RC 25, AK 76r B. On Oct. 10th 2005 at the Marienburg auction sold from Guelph ownership by Sotheby’s (Lot 89), at old Master Paintings Day Sale on Dec. 6th 2007 in London by Sotheby’s (Lot239). 53 The Vienna version of Hagar by Pietro da Cortona measures 123.5 × 99 cm, Wallmoden’s 133 × 98 cm, The Tribute to Caesar 130 × 191 cm, The Woman Taken in Adultery 120.2 × 173.5 cm. 54 RC 23, AK 76r A. 55 In this identification Bastian Eclercy, to whom my special thanks go for untiringly given collegial support, succeeded through stylistic analysis. 56 RC 8, AK 66r and 67r. Auctioned on Nov. 25th 2011 by Christie’s in Milan, Old Masters Pictures (Lot 40). 57 RC 43. In the auction catalogue of 1818 still listed as a “male portrait” by the hand of Anthonis van Dyck, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 55.2 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jules Bache Collection, 1949, Inv. No. 49.7.42. 58 RC 7, AK 78r. Today in private hands in Lugano. 59 RC 39. 60 RC 31, AK 91r. Of her there also exists a version held in the Prado in Madrid. 61 RC 17, AK 90r. 62 RC 12. 63 RC 5, AK 78r. 64 RC 18. 65 Erstwhile Collection Niccolini, created 1508, oil on wood, 80.7 × 57.5 cm, today National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, Inv. No. 1937.1.25. 66 AK 65r. 67 RC 3. 68 RC 473–533. 69 Cf. AK 87r and RC 1. 70 Hausmann 1873, p. 110, which at that time he had been able to purchase for only 85 Taler. 71 Hausmann 1831, p. 1 (No. 1). 72 With this Taxat the painting was at the lower end of the estimation of all pictures in the then Provinzialmuseum; for comparison: Hans Holbein the Younger Edward VI. als Kind of 1538 from old Guelphic possession, today in the Washington National Gallery of Art, in 1924 received an estimation of value of 200,000 Mark. 73 Skulpturen 1979, pp. 16–18. – Hausmann 1831, p. VI, note 5. – Raspe 1767, p. 237. – Strube 1992, pp. 106 f. 74 Winckelmann 1765, pp. 2 f. 75 Winckelmann 2006, pp. 122 f. 76 About the Geography of Art by of Winckelmann Bormann 2011, pp. 88, 96 f., 178, 236 f., 265–267, 277 note 242, pp. 288–290, 427 f. with note 905. 77 RC 39. 78 Winckelmann 1765, p. 30. 79 In the sense of the humanist Baldassare Castiglione, who in his epochal Libro del Cortegiano/Book of the Courtier of 1528 addresses to the nobleman the imperative to facilitate the arts. 80 De Talleyrand-Périgord 1891, pp. 57 f. – Guizot 1858, p. 6. 81 Frühsorge 1997, here p. 70: “Europäische RevolutionsGeschichte der letzten Dezennien”. 82 Herder 1988, p. 131: “[…] warte vielmehr auf die Sammlung Gemälde und Kupferstiche, die in weniger Zeit aus Wien ankommen sollen”. 83 Panofsky 1990, p. 89, passim. – Von Rosen 2009, pp. 203–210. 84 Söldner 1986, vol. 2, pp. 598 f. (No. 6), pp. 623 f. (No. 50), p. 629 (No. 60), p. 630 (No. 61, substantiated in the Tribuna first in 1589), p. 705 (No. 229). The wall elevations of the Florentine Tribuna done by Giuseppe Magni between 1748 and 1764 (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Inv. No. 4579–4588) show two of these sculptures; Millar 1967, pp. 17 f., tab. 17 f. 85 Two more depictions of the sleeping Christ Child were displayed in the Wallmoden Gallery (RC 21 and 32), the appearance in the case of a Christ Child sleeping on a cross being handed down by a drawing in the Album Kielmansegg on fol. 89r. – Furthermore a wooden tablet measuring 45 × 34.1 cm, should be pointed out, by Ramberg assigned to Gabriel Metsu, showing “a dead child on its bed” (RC 9). All three pictures probably were displayed in the Wallmoden Tribuna. Besides these conspicuously many child depictions from the new-age there are the countless antique pictures of children of the Wallmoden Gallery (Cat. No. H 23, H 35, H 37, H 39, H 47, H 51, H 73, H 82, H 84 and H 86). 86 Sassoferrato, Madonna with Sleeping Christ Child, Mexico City, Museo Soumaya. 87 The measures conveyed by the auction catalogue (RC 246) of two feet three inches height and one foot eleven inches width (65.7 × 56 cm) also come closer to the version in Modena (73 × 61 cm) than that in Mexico City (92 × 74.6 cm). 88 Grabar 1968, p. 34 and p. 120. 89 AK 76r. 90 by Voltelini 1892, here p. LVIII (No. 8872). – Ridolfi 1914, here p. 344. 91 Hausmann 1873, pp. 109 f. 92 Von Hadeln 1928, here p. 4, with the probably erroneous measurements 76 × 63.5 cm. – Siviero 1950, No. 9, with the correct measurements 153 × 117 cm. – Pignatti 1979, vol. 1, p. 183 (No. A107), with the probably erroneous measurements 73 × 64 cm; regarding this also see p. 128 (No. 139). 93 RC 20, AK 81r, today ascribed to Sebastiano del Piombo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 94 Salomon 2006. – Model probably in the end the woodcut with the Entdeckung der Ariadne from the Hypnerotomachia Polifili (Venice 1499); Saxl 1970. 95 RC 257. 96 Originated around 1635–1638, oil on wood, 149 × 261 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre. 97 Scribner 1989, p. 106. 98 I Corinthians 13:1. 99 Warburg 2000, here p. 3: “Engramme leidenschaftlicher Erfahrung”. 100 Stendhal 1981, p. 67 note *. 26 0 | 261