Römische Historische Mitteilungen, Band 65 (2023)

Antonio Canova, the most important sculptor of Classicism, stayed repeatedly in Vienna and maintained an intensive relationship both with the imperial family and with the institutions and their representatives in the city. The article traces these relationships and presences in chronological order by discussing the works commissioned for Vienna by the sculptor in their genesis, but also the relationships forged during his visits to the city, some of which resulted in new commissions. Against the background of the Napoleonic wars in Europe, the sculptor’s efforts to make himself independent of patrons and of the courts, which were new in terms of the sociology of art, become clear. This is also manifested in the equally novel phenomenon of the artist’s own recontextualization of his works, for he repeatedly had to adapt them to changing political constellations and thus to new locations. The focus of the article is then Canova’s main work in Vienna, the Christinen-Grabmal – also a product of such a recontextualization – in relation to which it is problematized here for the first time whether the current installation is actually ‘correct’ in the sense of the intended overall concept. The article concludes with Canova’s Theseus and Centaur Group, which bears witness like no other work of the time to how such recontextualizations generated meaning or even neutralized it in the end.

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In the Paulanerkirche in Vienna there is a chapel dedicated to St Francis de Sales, one of the patron saints of the Duchy of Savoy. On the altarpiece is an inscription with the foundation date (1706) and a direct reference to the Savoy Nation that had financed the work. In the 18th century, many immigrants from the territories of the Duchy of Savoy lived in Vienna. These were not only soldiers and nobles following Eugene of Savoy but mainly textile merchants and workers employed in the new cotton and silk spinning mills in and around Vienna. These immigrants had succeeded in formally integrating into the society of arrival, although they had retained a strong identity and relied on a solid network of compatriots who provided not only solidarity and charity work within the nation but also commercial enterprises. A second chapel in the city dedicated to the Savoyard saint was completed in the Peterskirche as early as 1714, again thanks to funding from a number of emigrant families. Many members of the Savoy Nation in Vienna maintained close ties with their homeland thanks to continuous trade as well as artistic and cultural exchanges: not only artists travelled between the two countries, but also numerous works of art were sent from Vienna to villages in Savoy and Piedmont in memory of their expatriate fellow citizens. In many cases, the models taken came from the new homeland, as evidenced by the copy of the Peterskirche altarpiece that is still preserved in the parish church in Saint Nicolas-de-Véroce in the Savoy Alps.

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The letters, published here for the first time, written by Baron Wilhelm von Edelsheim in the years 1770–1772 during his stay in Italy and addressed to Wenzel Anton Kaunitz-Rietberg are an extremely interesting document for analyzing the cultural and artistic life of that period. Indeed, there are numerous references to the produc-tion of works of art, such as the numerous notes by the Baron about the works and life of Anton Raphael Mengs. These letters are an outstanding document demon-strating the exchange of ideas and knowledge, which enabled the development of Neoclassicism in Vienna in the 1770s.

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The names of the operatic genres used in the early eighteenth century reveal a general tendency toward a division between the serious dramma per musica (“play for music”), which was stripped of any comic element by libretto reforms until the achievement of the Metastasian model, and the commedia per musica (“com-edy through music”), which originated in Italy and was increasingly exported by troupes traveling throughout Europe. Between these two extremes, however, there is a plethora of mixed genres that maintain the mixture of the tragic and the comic that characterized 17th-century dramma per musica. Among these, the tragicom-media per musica seems to have been a trademark of the Viennese court, which favored tragicomic works for the carnival season, reserving serious works for oc-casions celebrating imperial power (genetliacs, name days, and weddings). How-ever, the term tragicommedia per musica is also found in other operatic centers, notably Venice, where Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Pariati worked as librettists before moving to the Viennese court. The aim of this paper is to highlight the peculiarities of Viennese tragicomedy as the result, on the one hand, of the permanence of an indige-nous tradition and, on the other hand, of fruitful cultural transfer relations with Venice, a productive and fertile ground for experimentation with new operatic genres.

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In 1716, Antonio Caldara had achieved his long-awaited goal: the composer had been accepted as Vice-Kapellmeister at the Viennese court. The earliest datable composition he presented at his new post was a cantata, a vocal work with a small cast. This secular composition, entitled Da te che pasci ogn’ora, dates from July 22nd of the aforementioned year and marks the cornerstone of Caldara’s rich and distinguished activity at the imperial court, which was to span two decades until his death in 1736. Remarkably, however, a not insignificant number of his works for the imperial court were not created in the Habsburg capital, but far from Vienna in Italy. One place attracted him again and again: Casalmaggiore in Lombardy. About a quarter of his cantata compositions for the Viennese court were written there. One stands out in particular: the cantata for three voices and string accompaniment Alla tromba immortale, written on the occasion of Empress Elisabeth Christine’s birth-day. The text, written by Camillo Mantovani and set to music by Caldara in 1732, combines Casalmaggiore on the Po with Caldara’s biography, the empress and a political problem of the House of Habsburg that is as delicate as it is urgent – the question of succession. The article explores the question of how Caldara’s relations with Casalmaggiore were shaped and which works he composed there for the im-perial court. Alla tromba immortale is then analyzed as a case study, both textually and musically, in order to extrapolate some aspects of “Austrian Italianità”.

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In accordance with the precepts of Aristotle and state doctrines such as Giovanni Botero’s Della ragione di stato, princes of the early modern period were presented as virtuous benefactors descending from venerable families. At the Viennese impe-rial court around 1700, particular importance was obviously attached to panegyric music theatre for image cultivation: the task of the court librettists, the poeti cesarei, was to compose libretti (componimenti per musica, serenate) on the birthdays and name days of the ruling couple, in which homage and Habsburg propaganda were in the foreground; these were often peppered with allusions to current events such as fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession. Through a comparison of the two opposite poetic personalities of Silvio Stampiglia and Pietro Antonio Bernardoni, this article examines the different strategies of the librettists to portray the emperor, Leopold I and Joseph I respectively, as infallible descendants of Roman emperors qua translatio imperii. The basic message of these libretti is often hardly differ-ent from that of a panegyric; it is therefore hardly surprising that there are often personal overlaps between the professional groups of librettists and panegyrists, which are by no means always clearly distinguishable from one another. It was not uncommon for such occasional librettists and panegyrists to have no permanent position at court. A striking example of a precariously employed panegyrist is Giacomo Filippo Cyni, a prelate and panegyrist, diplomat, and spy, who sang the praises of three emperors (Leopold I, Joseph I, Charles VI) in Vienna, maintained an academy to whose discussions Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz also contributed, and who, like many of his colleagues, made his way through life in an almost ambigu-ous way with various short-term jobs.

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The ‘Italians’ in Vienna – whether they came from Italy, from the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland or from the Adriatic region – were a clearly linguistically and visually, but also confessionally perceptible group of residents within the capital and royal residence. As permanent residents or as temporary labour migrants, they were able to occupy diverse niches within the early modern spectrum of occupa-tions of the city. For example, they could be found as lemon merchants, silk makers, chimney sweeps, ice-cream sellers, salami sellers, rag pickers or highly esteemed construction workers. In culinary terms, ‘Italian Vienna’ lives on in the haberdash-ery, in the mandoletti makers, the biscuit bakers and the rosolio producers. The Viennese court (with its music band, the court poets, or the court library) and the military offered important career options to the well-connected Transalpini. We know little about the self-image of the ‘Italian Viennese’. It is difficult to say whether the Transalpini in Vienna interpreted themselves as immigrants, as emigrants, as migrants, as labour migrants or as migrants, or how their self-image was shaped at all. The Italians living in Vienna had ‘double identities’ that adapted to both the society of origin and the society of arrival.

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The paper deals with the role of Italian speaking members of the Society of Jesus in Vienna throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The influence Jesuit fathers exerted at the Habsburg court(s) has often been discussed, as was their importance in in-tellectual life through the preeminence in academic institutions. This study focuses on the impact (native) Italian speaking Jesuits had in the city of Vienna, not only as renowned confessors and preachers at court and in city churches, but also as founders and leading personalities of the Italian Congregation(s) from around 1630 up to the dissolution of the Order. Following Jesuit sources the paper also shows the importance Jesuit colleges in multilingual territories under Habsburg domination (such as Gorizia) had in providing the necessary personnel for the pastoral needs of the Italian speaking comunity in Vienna.

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The musical genre of the oratorio emerged in the course of the devotional movement triggered by Filippo Neri in the first half of the 17th century in Rome. The oratorio arrived at the Habsburg court in Vienna earlier than in most Italian cities. The fact that it became a permanent feature of court ceremonial there from the 1660s onwards is thanks to the pious, art-loving Empress Eleonora II of the House of Gonzaga, who was herself artistically active. During her widowhood, Eleonora regularly had works of this genre performed in her private chapel. The performances took place weekly during Lent and until 1667 also during Advent. Among the oratorios sung were works either created at the imperial court or imported from Italy. In the early days, compositions from Rome predominated. Later, imports from Upper and North Central Italy were added, but above all, domestic oratorio production increased greatly. Among the imports were works with texts by Loreto Vittori, Lelio Orsini, Francesco Buti, Pietro Filippo Bernini, Bartolomeo Beverini, Pompeo Colonna, Ippolito Bentivolio, Benedetto Pamphilj, Pier Matteo Petrucci and Cesare Mazzei. The settings were by such renowned composers as Marco Marazzoli, Carlo Caproli, Giovanni Bicilli, Giovanni Francesco Marcorelli, Giacomo Carissimi, Bernardo Pasquini, Alessandro Melani, Giovanni Legrenzi and Giuseppe Pacieri. Most probably, for ease of comprehension, Eleonora had only works performed with Italian texts, thus contributing to the consolidation of the Oratorio volgare (in Italian language) and to its assertion over the Oratorio latino. At the same time, she made a significant contribution to the preservation and cultivation of Italian poetry and oratory, as she printed the texts of the oratorios performed at her court and had renowned ecclesiastical rhetoricians from Italy preach during the oratorio performances. Several observations suggest that the oratorios, in conjunction with sermons, were understood as spiritual counterparts to the literary academies framed with music.

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The theatre tradition of the Habsburg Empire has its roots in a past rich in festive events and very different types of performances. Already at the beginning of the 16th century and increasingly so during the 17th century, especially under the reign of Emperor Leopold I, the Viennese court engaged architects, artists, composers, musicians and writers to create – following the example of the Italian princely courts – an impressive spectacular culture devoted to great dynamism. With the spread of musical opera at the beginning of the 17th century also in Habsburg territory, the monarchs began to commission the construction of new theatres, which were true jewels of engineering and stage technology. It is at this point that, in the history of the Empire, mention should be made of the contribution of Giovanni and Lodovico Ottavio Burnacini. The Burnacini were illustrious ‘theatre engineers’ and certainly –together with Giacomo Torelli, who had been invited by Louis XIV to Paris – among the most important of those who emigrated beyond the Alps. A theatre engineer took care of most aspects of festivals and theatre productions, from conception to realisation, giving a decisive imprint to the whole aesthetics of the event. The aim of the article is to illustrate the researches carried out in recent years and to show how the Burnacini family, thanks to cultured men of letters who acted as intermediaries, were invited to Vienna to live there permanently, proposing types of spectacles that became fundamental for the history of theatre and almost a synonymous of Baroque culture.

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By cross-referencing the data provided by documents in the family archive (letters, diaries, expense registers), the different stays in Vienna of Monsignor Andrea San-tacroce and his nephew Scipione are reconstructed, outlining the cultural frame-work of the city and their contribution in terms of artistic and cultural exchange, of which the family members residing in Rome were also effective instruments. Diplo-matic gifts, the sending of poetic texts, open architectural sites, as well as religious and secular festivals and ceremonies, banquets, theatres: the documentary sources paint a vivid picture of Vienna at the end of the 17th century and the first decade of the 18th century, which is echoed in the Roman affairs of the family.

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The completion of the Austrian edition of the papal registers as well as various collections concerning the Iberian Peninsula, and most particularly the Butllari de Catalunya of Schmidt and Sabanés, will now allow historians to advance the work undertaken by Paul Kehr and his team a century ago in deepening our understand-ing of papal relations with Catalonia at the time of the influential Pope Innocent III (1198–1216). It is worth recording that there are letters of Innocent III which are neither in the papal registers nor in the Butllari (which deals with originals) and that these letters are also remain of great historical value. The following is a register of 32 additional letters of Innocent III, mainly copies, concerning Catalonia which indicate the wide-ranging nature of papal government and the extent of the pope’s authority there. While it is hoped that this list may be almost complete, it is indicated that there could yet be more rooms to be added to Kehr’s ‘archivalische Labyrinth’.

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The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist, St. Elisabeth and Two Angels painting from Château Lednice was an integral part of the art collections of the Princely House of Liechtenstein from 1680 (after it had been purchased by Karl Eusebius of Liechten-stein) until the end of World War Two. Throughout the 17th and 18th century it was considered to be Raphael’s monochromatic sketch to The Holy Family of Francis I, but this painting was already located in France at that time. From the early 1800s, the painting received less and less attention as it was attributed to Raphael’s pupil Polidoro da Caravaggio, and this trend also continued later when scholars classified it as another example of numerous Baroque paintings which copied the famous original. It was not until 2010 that an attempt to rehabilitate the painting from Châ-teau Lednice was made by the restoration specialist Pavel Klimeš, who came to the conclusion that it is merely a sketch – a preparatory grisaille by Raphael. That is also why, Klimeš argued, a delicate and obviously cheaper canvas had been chosen, and the painting had been made with an emphasis on the composition, drawing and modelling. Klimeš’s conclusion is acceptable, but only for the function of this work of art; the proposed attribution is not supported by evidence. However, it turns out that the painting was made in Raphael’s studio along with the original and it may have been finished at the same time, i.e. already in 1518. In this paper, the authors attribute the painting to Tommaso Vincidor, Raphael’s pupil from Bologna, who came to Brussels after his master’s death to supervise the preparation and real-ization of the tapestries for the Vatican Palace. He probably took the record of The Holy Family of Francis I with him to Flanders as a studio material ‘to be used later’, and not only did he use it himself, which is obvious from his design of the tapestry Meeting of the Two Holy Families, but he also helped a number of Flemish artists become familiar with the famous painting of Raphael from the royal art collections and learn about the latest style trends coming from Rome.

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Central Europe emerged from the 17th century with a comprehensive political and confessional reorganization due to the transfer of Hungary to the Habsburg sphere of power and influence. At the same time, the lands of St. Stephen’s Crown returned to the circle of Christianized countries in Europe. The papacy played a major role in this development. On the other hand, the expulsion of Islam from this zone had disastrous consequences for Catholicism in the Balkans, whose ecclesiastical struc-tures completely collapsed as a result of the repressive measures taken by the Otto-mans. For Southeastern Europe, this marked the beginning of a period of persistent confessional crises, which were combined with the national question in the 18th and 19th centuries and were to continue right into our own time. This article examines the role of the popes, especially Innocent XI, in this process of reorganization of Central and Southeastern Europe. Special attention is paid to the alliances initiated and fostered by the papacy, the financing of this policy and its importance for the papacy itself and the church in the field of political and liturgical representation.

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The article presents a painting that passed at auction in 2018 as an unknown work of the 18th and/or 19th century. It is the painting Hercules Frees Prometheus, which is a new work in the reconstruction of secular thematic painting by the French artist Pierre Subleyras, who was active in Rome between 1728 and 1749. The attri-bution is corroborated by the painting‘s mention in a life of Subleyras published in 1786 and its inclusion in the artist‘s famous Atelier preserved at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In closing, hypotheses about the painting‘s function in the context of what Stephen Greenblatt (1980) had called the artist‘s ‘self-fashioning‘ are added.

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In the wake of the struggle for freedom against Napoleon and the Bavarian oc-cupation, the small Catholic splinter group of the “Manharter” had emerged in the Tyrolean Brixental. Although they did not strive for secession from the Cath-olic Church, they refused to pander to the revolutionary ‘zeitgeist’ that was also spreading in the Alpine region. They were characterized by a pronounced Catholic fundamentalism and fought innovations such as modern schoolbooks or smallpox vaccination, which they considered as the work of the devil. They came into conflict with the Catholic Church because they refused to obey the priests and church offi-cials who had sworn allegiance to the Napoleonic regime. Because they resisted ecclesiastical and state attempts at mediation, while at the same time emphasizing their loyalty to the papacy, their most important representatives were allowed to travel to Rome in the Holy Year of 1825; an audience with the pope was intended to convince them to return into the bosom of the mother church. The article analyzes the extensive reports on the Roman negotiations, which reached Vienna through the embassy in Rome. The negotiations were led by Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari, later Pope Gregory XVI. In order to be granted an audience with Pope Leo XII, it was fundamental to submit to the dictates of the official Catholic Church. After six difficult rounds of negotiations, their loyalty to the pope prevailed, and they sub-mitted to the ecclesiastical authorities. This cleared the way for the audience they sought, which took place on December 18th, 1825, culminating in an invitation to meet the pope. They signed similar declarations to the state and ecclesiastical authorities back home in early 1826. Thus, the short history of the Manharter move-ment, which was a symptom of the skepticism of many people towards the rapidly advancing modernization in all areas of life, came soon to an end.

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The paper analyses hitherto unpublished documents of an informal gathering of young men, mainly from Germany and the Danube Monarchy, as mainly documented for the year 1901 in Rome. They met without an appointment in a typical Roman trattoria, which had become a second home for the participants. In this often wine-soaked atmosphere, entries were made in a 170 page album, now kept in the archive of the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome with the name of this informal gathering “Gemischte Gesellschaft” in golden letters. The particular were not united by any professional network, they had presumably come to Rome for a more or less long tie for a variety of reasons. Here they could move free form domestic conventions and follow their likings. The innkeeper of the pub administered the folio and presented it to the changing guests of the “Mixed Society” in memory of the convivial hours spent in the pub, the friendships made there; the jokes and ‘adventures’ experienced together were recorded by the participants in form of greetings, poems, drawings and caricatures. Numerous postcards form ‘alumni’ have been preserved. The Hungartian illustrator Gyula Éder often captured typical situations of the individual friends in pictures. The album provides an authentic insight into a hitherto unexamined category of leisure behaviour of young foreigners who considered themselves Europeans in Rom around 1900, they did not belong to any artistic, commercial or religious community but probably met by chance in the trattoria and became friends there. For example, this private aspect of the Roman stay of Hans Posse, late director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, and that of Ignaz Philipp Dengel, known in the circle of friends as “The Cardinal”, director of the Austrian Historical Institute from 1929 to 1938, were completely unknown.

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The 34th International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest from May 25 to 30, 1938, was the culmination of a series of splendid self-presentations of the Catholic Church under Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) in the interwar period. Both ecclesiastical and state authorities of Austria - transformed from a republic into a Christian-German state under authoritarian leadership in 1933/34 - planned a grand entrance for it and a wide accompanying program for pilgrims passing through the country. With the invasion of Austria by German troops on March 12, 1938, all these plans became obsolete. The German authorities, through bureaucratic hurdles, thwarted participation from the now ‘Great German Reich’ and forbade any reporting on the event. Even the church leaders of Austria voluntarily refrained from joining in the celebrations out of panic over the new circumstances. For their part, the Hungarian and Vatican organizers of the Congress avoided clear statements on the delicate political situation and thus disappointed relevant expectations of the free Catholic world.

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During the Second World War, the Holy See was faced with the complex situation in the Balkans resulting from the occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941 by the German armed forces, supported by Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians. The birth of the independent state of Croatia posed the problem of the country’s recognition by the papal diplomatic bodies and so did the visit to the Vatican of President Ante Pavelic´ and the sovereign-designate, Aimon of Savoy Aosta. Both issues were debated in the Secretariat of State and a solution was found based on case studies written by Msgr. Armando Lombardi, with references to the precedents and theories of international law at the time. Pius XII therefore opted to send an Apostolic Visitor to Zagreb, the Benedictine abbot Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone, entrusted with an on-site religious mission. Pavelic´, on the other hand, tried, in vain, to accredit to the Vatican his unofficial representatives – first Nikola Rušinovic´ and later Prince Erwin Lobkowicz – who were only admitted to the Apostolic Palace for the purpose of providing information on the religious situation in the Croatian State.

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Bachmann’s research community largely agrees that the author’s work has many more references to music and philosophy than to the visual arts. This article makes some clarifications and shows several connections with the visual arts by analysing Bachmann’s biography, by referring to real and fictitious artists, art genres and ti-tles mentioned in her work, as well as to the author’s visual text strategies. The main goal is to examine the reception of her work by visual artists in Italy – Cy Twombly, Elisa Montessori and Marina Bindella –, that is, the intermedial forms between literature and art. The most important terms of analysis are (a) ut pictura poesis (Horace), (b) successiviness and simultanaeity (Lessing) and (c) literary/literariness in visual arts. This shows the (a) similarities and (b) differences/borders of the two media as well as (c) their extensions in the sense of transferring the qualities of the foreign medium (literature) to its own medium (art), that is, the narrative and poetic principles.

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