Heidelberg University Publishing

Dowagers played an active role in politics and culture at the courts of the Holy Roman Empire. They were mothers, advisers and patrons of the arts. The rulers had to provide them with an appropriate dowry and a residence. For the first time, the book describes the architecture and the ceremonial use of dower residences from the 15th to the 17th century from an art historical point of view. Focusing on functional changes and conversion of the castles, the author shows how the dowagers expressed their new independence in an architectural and spatial way.

The production of glass was one of the high technologies of the early modern period. At a heat of around 1500 degrees, mixtures of sand, lime and vegetable, wood or potash were transformed into greenish, crystal-clear or colorful marvels in the glassworks of Europe. Its aesthetic and material properties-transparency, workability, and durability-made glass a coveted material that was still the preserve of the elite in the 16th century and did not become an affordable mass product until the second half of the 18th century.

The volume Glass in the Early Modern Period pursues an interdisciplinary approach. It takes its starting point in the conditions of glass production in early modern glassworks, the high consumption of resources, and the resulting social conflicts. The volume focuses on the various historical forms of use, glass as an object of collection, and its allegorical meaning in painting. At the same time, the volume deals with the analysis and preservation of glass objects from a scientific and conservation perspective and with the presentation of baroque glass from a museum perspective. In all of this, a close connection to the court culture of the European nobility is apparent, who acted as pioneers, patrons and, not least, buyers, users and collectors of the glass objects. In this way, many of the luxury objects have been preserved to this day.

Louis XIV's absolutist rule, which began in 1661, was preceded by a period of intensive building activity of ascended state and financial elites in France. Among the most important of these estates, which were mostly located in the Parisian countryside, was the château of Vaux-le-Vicomte (built for Nicolas Fouquet), which serves as a case study for the interaction between social mobility and art. This volume focuses on the decoration of the château and garden, created under the direction of Charles Le Brun between 1657 and 1661, and places it in the context of comparable decoration projects of the time.

Entrepreneurial activity by nobles was highly debated in the European Early Modern period. Generally, it was considered socially inappropriate. Nevertheless, profit-oriented activities of the nobility were an economic necessity and an everyday matter. The volume traces this ambivalence, using European examples between 1600 and 1900 from various ranks of the nobility and different fields of economic activity. It shows that the involvement of the nobility in European economic processes should not be underestimated. The book opens up an underrepresented field of research for a more in-depth examination.

Dedicated to housing courtly architectural models, Landgrave Karl founded the so-called Modellhaus at the beginning of the 18th-century, an unusual  building which went on to become one of the most admired sights of its time. The collection included, most importantly, a monumental model of the most famous of all the Kassel artworks, namely the statue of Hercules overlooking the extensive Karlsberg gardens. Through recently discovered plans, files, and contemporary travel memoirs, this book retraces the story of this unique building and its collection which lasted almost a century, guiding us through Berlin, Saint Petersburg, and Paris, to reveal the continuing importance of models.

The profession of architect underwent the decisive stages of its professionalisation during the early modern period of the Holy Roman Empire (approx. 1500-1800). As a rule, multiple training courses in the artistic, military and scientific fields prepared the architects for a broad range of professional tasks. As “Baumeister” (head architects) with building authorities, they introduced an efficient division of labour in design, planning, execution and administration, and were sometimes able to pursue remarkable careers. This volume examines the cultural, social and administrative factors that contributed to the artistic work of architects.

The unification of the arts in the "Gesamtkunstwerk" of courtly opera has repeatedly been the subject of musicological research, but so far, for example, the specific spatial-architectural side of courtly opera has hardly been considered. Music theater means scenic performance and architecture alike. Both formed essential components of lordly representation in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the Old Kingdom, therefore, not only the aristocratic nobility arranged music-theatrical performances, but smaller courts also brought ballets and operas on stage. The interdisciplinary contributions of a conference of the Rudolstädter Arbeitskreis zur Residenzkultur deal with the topic in a European perspective and explain the diverse connections that existed between the music theater and the courtly space in the architectural, political-cultural and social sense.