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
Porcelain making bloomed under Augustus III, yet the king was more interested in music and art, primarily painting, but also drawing and engraving. He developed the gallery of Dresden, as mentioned above, into a collection of European rank and enriched the engraving collection with valuable drawings and tens of thousands of prints. 43 Because it dominates the Dresden townscape, the Hofkirche, today the cathedral of the town, commissioned by Augustus III and planned by Gaetano Chiaveri (1689-1770), is often cited as the only major architectural enterprise of the king. Chiaveri first visited Dresden in 1737, and the foundation stone was laid in 1739. Though the nave was covered in 1743, construction was interrupted and it dragged on until the completion of the tower in 1755; the interior was never fully completed. The plans included sumptuous decoration, with the ceiling frescoes in the nave to be painted by Anton Kern (1710- 1747). 44 That Anton Raphael Mengs painted the picture for the high altar in Rome, 45 however, scarcely proves that the king was committed exclusively to the Neoclassical trend: the approaches of the artists participating in the decoration, from Stefano Torelli and Franz Karl Palkó (1724-1767) 46 to Charles Francois Hutin, were highly diverse. Augustus III was the first ruler who dared to build a monumental court church dedicated to the Catholic faith in Lutheran Dresden. Since the conversion of Augustus II and then of Augustus III, decades had passed and the whole town had changed, too. Dresden was no longer the Saxon ducal residence it used to be in the late 17 th and early 18 th centuries. It was more international than ever: it was teeming with diplomats and sojourning foreigners, Polish noble families and their servants, who were all Catholic. Still, the court had to be tactful and Steffi Roettgen was right in pointing out that the completion of the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) with its enormous dome was presumably the political precondition for the erection of the Hofkirche in a Lutheran country. 47 The monumental constructions - the Frauenkirche, 48 the Brühl palace on Augustusstrasse 49 , the Hubertusburg hunting lodge 50 , the Brühl mansions at Pforten, 51 Oberlichtenau, 52 and Nischwitz 53 , the mansion of Martinskirchen (owned by the brother of the prime minister), 54 and finally the Catholic Hofkirche 55 required the contribution of the painters and painting. Stefano Torelli and Pietro Rotari (1707-1762) were working in Dresden, and Dietrich had become a virtuoso admired well beyond the borders of Saxony, too. Festivities on the occasion of the marriage in 1719 of the prince elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus, later King Augustus III, to Maria Josepha, daughter of Emperor Joseph I. Above: View of the upper hall of the present-day Porcelain Collection Pavilion, below: View of the upper hall of the present-dav German-Hall. Engraving after 1724; Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden,
