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

Confidant and secretary to Count Brühl, Carl Heinrich von Heineken, the director of the royal collection of engravings from 1746 and one of the most highly educated and best art critics of the age, had several collecting interests ranging from old German art to the works of his age. Presumably the painters supported by Brühl also created works for Heineken. Without his benevolence they could not win the favour of the prime minister, and hence of the court.

91 Heineken probably exploited his position: Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn, the diplomat, art writer and later director of the Dresden Art Academy and the royal collections, complained in a letter of 1750 to his brother, the poet Friedrich von Hagedorn (1708-1754), that he had been obliged to yield several pictures of his collection to Heineken.

92 In 1756 Heineken had Pierre Remy auction off part of his collection in Paris.

93 Hagedorn was in possession of some two hundred, mostly contemporary paintings in the 1740s. He was friendly with painters such as Alexander Thiele and Ádám Mányoki, and he knew and respected the Viennese works of Franz Christoph Janneck (1703-1761) and Josef Orient (1677-1747). He made an accurate description of his Kabinett; and in July 1748 he wrote letters to his brother, but his general thoughts about art were only the pretext to praise his own collection. Hagedorn wanted to put his whole collection, instead of a few works, up for sale at a good price, but he failed to make a deal. His letters published twenty years after his death in 1796 and his book Lettre à un amateur de la peinture [...] of 1755 preserve a lot of information that otherwise would have been lost about the lives and work of painters and collectors close to him.

94 Hagedorn, none too wealthy, was slightly jealous of those whom fate had endowed with a greater capacity to love art. The following critical remark of his reveals this clearly: "If a noble gentleman has a cabinet, or more appropriately for his rank, a gallery, though the two are not identical, he has contemporary artists paint for him, and decorates a room with the works of each: then this is a virtue and the gentleman is called a meceanas. The Russian ambassador, Count Keyserling had a whole cabinet; his adviser was the painter Dietrich. Of course, he had him paint for himself. A whole room was thus furnished, and it was rumoured that Count Keyserling had an entire cabinet full of works by Dietrich."

95 Hagedorn contrasts these remarks with praise for his own collection: "I could make three separate cabinets from my Orients, Brands and Querfurts, and I could adorn two rooms with my Manyockis and Nogaris. As soon as fate presents me with the necessary five rooms, and more for the rest of my paintings, with the adequate furniture, then I would be right again, although I am neither a noble gentleman, nor am I a better judge than others."

96 Hagedorn's side-swipe was directed at Hermann Karl von Keyserling (1695-1764), whom music lovers know as the patron and friend of Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach wrote Goldberg variations for him in 1742. Keyserling was a patron of art and friend of artists, lover of music and books, and an extremely successful diplomat. His role in the intricate web of politics, power, and culture in the courts of St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Dresden, and Vienna can hardly be overestimated. Wherever he lived, he supported the artists, scholars and musicians. His example clearly illustrates how diverse the artistic and scientific scene was in the capital on the Elbe prior to the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). In 1741 Keyserling gave 178 paintings to Augustus III. Neither the price nor the precise circumstances are known, but Keyserling was promoted to the rank of imperial count in the year of the transaction, and this he owed to Augustus III, who became regent following the death of the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI (1685-1740; German emperor from 1711). Was the relinquishing of the pictures a business deal or an expression of gratitude by the baron elevated to the rank of count? If the list of pictures is taken as a starting point, derived from the inventory of "pre-1741" paintings in the Dresden Gallery (also called Steinhuser's eightfold catalogue)

97 and from the serial of the numbers, one is prompted to infer conclusions not only about the collector's relationship to certain artists but also to the interpersonal relations among the artists in Dresden. Keyserling owned the excellent self-portrait of Ismael Mengs now in the gallery.

98 He was personally acquainted with the elder Mengs, who loved music similarly to the count; their shared admiration for music explains why Anton Raphael Mengs painted a portrait of the singer Domenico Annibali. Count Keyserling's artistic counsellor, Dietrich - who was highly esteemed as a painter by both Mengs and Winckelmann - must also have played a great role in the circles of art and music in Dresden. In the house of the chief court painter and Academy director, Louis de Silvestre,

99 the cultivation of music had first priority. It was recorded that one of the master's daughters sang in Italian.

1(1(1 In the artist's home artists, ministers, and foreign envoys came together, so Keyserling must have been among them. Music wove tight threads around people of utterly different character as well, as is revealed by an "historical laudation" devoted to the knight Anton Raphael Mengs and written by Giovanni Lodovico Bianconi (1717-1781), private doctor of the Saxon heir to the throne, Frederick Christian (1722-1763), and a remarkable art connoisseur and writer. In it Bianconi wrote about Ismael Mengs: "In Silvestre's house, where Ismael was also present, Annibali sang a touching aria one night to everyone's delight. There are arias tuned wholly to the strings of feeling hearts, which they cannot resist. This one profoundly