Representing Duchess Anna Amalia's Bildung: A Visual Metamorphosis in Portraiture from Political to Personal in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Description

The cultural milieu in the “Age of Goethe” of eighteenth-century Germany is given fresh context in this art historical study of the noted writers’ patroness: Anna Amalia, Duchess of Weimar-Sachsen-Eisenach. An important noblewoman and patron of the arts, Anna Amalia transformed her court into one of the most intellectually and culturally brilliant in Europe; this book reveals the full scope of her impact on the history of art of this time and place. More than just biography or a patronage study, this book closely examines the art produced by German-speaking artists and the figure of Anna Amalia herself. Her portraits demonstrate the importance of social networks that enabled her to construct scholarly, intellectual identities not only for herself, but for the region she represented. By investigating ways in which the duchess navigated within male-dominated institutions as a means of advancing her own self-cultivation – or Bildung – this book demonstrates the role accorded to women in the public sphere, cultural politics, and historical memory. Cumulatively, Christina K. Lindeman traces how Anna Amalia, a woman from a small German principality, was represented as an active participant in enlightened discourses. The author presents a novel and original argument concerned with how a powerful woman used art to shape her identity, how that identity changed over time, and how people around her shaped it – an approach that elucidates the power of portraiture in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe. Cover Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Gender and Bildung Portraying Bildung Why portraiture? Chapter overview Notes 1 Setting the stage Notes 2 Composing a musical portrait Music, the female sex, and body politics Playing music in familial and gendered relationships Composer not performer Musical life in Weimar Notes 3 Representing the female Grand Tourist The Grand Tour Anna Amalia’s voyage Rome 1788 Notes 4 The scientific lady in Naples Intellectual and social climate of Naples The German community in Naples Gendered souvenirs The antiquarian portrait Notes 5 Materializing Anna Amalia’s Bildung The cult of the good mother Royal women as good mothers Gendering drawing The Weimar Minerva Print collecting in eighteenth-.century Germany Reading Jagemann’s portrait in the context of Wittumspalais Notes 6 Anna Amalia’s Gedenktafel: The making of an icon The spectacle of death and remembering in the public sphere The memorial and romantic nationalism Personal mourning Notes Conclusion Appendix A Appendix B Bibliography Unpublished Primary Sources Goethe-und-Schiller Archiv, Weimar Goethe-Nationalmuseum Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Weimar Weimar Schlossmuseum Anna Amalia Bibliothek Published Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index Colour Plates