Court Culture in Dresden [Paperback]

This is the first cultural history of Baroque Dresden, the capital of Saxony and the most important Protestant territory in the Empire from the mid-sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly shows how the art patronage of the Electors fits into the intellectual climate of the age and investigates its political and religious context. Lutheran church music and architecture, the influence of Italy, the cabinet of curiosities and the culture of collecting, alchemy, mining and early technology, official image-making and court theatre are some of the wealth of colourful subjects dealt with during the period 1553 to 1733.List of Illustrations Introduction Acknowledgements Genealogical Tables The Lutheran Legacy: The Albertine Electors and Protestant Court Culture The Italian Ideal: The Sixteenth Century Reception of Italian Court Culture The Management of Knowledge: The Dresden Collections, Their Origins and Development The Secrets of the Heavens and the Earth: Alchemy, Mining and Astrology at the Dresden Court The Fabrication of an Image: Johann Georg II's Self-Presentation The 'Recreation of the Spirit': Theatre at the Dresden Court During the Seventeenth Century The Saxon Hercules: August the Strong, Elector of Saxony, King of Poland Conclusion Bibliography Index

'Professor Watanabe-O'Kelly's investigation - under the general rubric of court culture - offers far more than one might first expect. This is political history as well as art history, cultural history as well as intellectual history. Her text and pictures order the vast collections assembled over almost two hundred years and explain the varying logic behind how they were gathered and exhibited together. Yet her analysis never dulls the sense of amazement and wonderment these princes - and their servants - worked so hard to fashion...[F]ew have produced descriptions of the poetics of power that range so widely and probe so deeply.' - Professor Mary Lindemann, Carnegie Mellon Univels2