Buzási Enikő szerk.: In Europe' Princely Courts, Ádám Mányoki, Actors and venues of a portraitist's career (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2003/1)

Harald Marx: "THE LUCKY STAR OF PAINTING HAS RISEN" Painting and Art Patronage in Dresden under Augustus the Strong and Augustus III

The politics of the years around 1700 were characterised by daring hopes and profound despair: the coronation of Augustus as king of Poland and the Great Nordic War. The artistic ambitions of Augustus would have borne fruit much earlier, had it not been for the Saxony's disastrous escapade in the war against the Swedes, in which the king had hoped to strengthen his Polish position, but eventually achieved the polar opposite.

6 This explains why the stylistic change in the development of Baroque painting occurred not at the beginning of Augustus II's reign, but only at the turn of the 1710s and 1720s. Both periods belong to the Baroque but there is a world of difference: that of the 17

th and early 18

th century is sombre, deep-hued and heavy, while the tone of the later works is festive and jovial, and "Venetian" to some extent. This shift in the palette can first be detected in Italy and France, especially in the pastels of Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757). Both Augustus the Strong and his son admired the painter's art. The richest selection of her pastels in the world can be found in the Dresden Gallery.

7 Artists in Dresden were quick to respond and join the new trends. A contributing factor were the Venetians active here, such as Alessandro Mauro, whom the heir, later King Augustus III, had met in Venice in 1716; Gasparo Diziani (1689-1767), who sojourned in Dresden in 1717; Giuseppe Galli-Bibiena (1696-1756), who worked here in 1719 and later from 1747; Giovanni Battista Grone (1682-1748) who worked in Saxony from 1724; and Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675-1741) who was here in the 1720s.

8 All this had an impact on the Frenchman Louis de Silvestre, who began with sombre and weighty works only to switch over to increasingly lighter and brighter hues in the 1720s. The Baroque art of Dresden was fed by repeated encounters with artists and works coming from the European centres: Italy and France, Holland and the imperial residences such as Vienna and Berlin. Under the specific conditions of Augustus the Strong's and Augustus Ill's courts, these contacts produced masterful results shaped by the client's will, the traditions of Dresden and, naturally but not exclusively, external stimuli. After the Thirty Years' War, under John II, art would not have flourished without the example of Italy, where architects such as Wolf Caspar von Klengel and painters like Bottschild and Fehling went on long study tours. International artistic relations of unprecedented intensity under the two Augustuses were essential preconditions for the efflorescence in Saxony. Bernardo Bellotto, called Canaletto: Dresden from the Right Bank of the Elbe Below the Augustus Bridge. Etching, 1749 Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett