Rosen, Karl von
König Friedrich Wilhelm IV, in seinem verhältnis zur bildenden Kunst.
Stralsund, Siegmund Bremer 1862.
Full Description
8vo. 52pp. Publisher’s gilt and blind-stamped cloth, all edges gilt. Author’s contemporary ink presentation inscription on a preliminary blank leaf to Graf von Behr-Negendank. A good copy.
Only edition of a scarce publication which serves as the most explicit contemporary record of the contribution to the patronage of architecture and the arts made by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia (1795-1861). King Friedrich Wilhelm’s reign as ruler of Prussia was overshadowed by the revolution of 1848, and ended with his mental and physical collapse, but as a young man he had become keenly interested in architecture, and, as the present publication records, he became during his years as heir to the Prussian throne a major patron of the celebrated architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, as well as of other architects, sculptors and painters. It was also Friedrich Wilhelm who in 1842 took the decisive step of officially authorising the restoration and completion of Cologne Cathedral, which he had been shown round by Sulpiz Boisserée as early as 1814 and of which he had always been an admirer. The volume’s author, Karl von Rosen, was an antiquary and art collector from Stralsund, on Germany’s Baltic coast, and the present copy is one presented by him to Graf Ulrich von Behr Negendank, a local landowner who shared his interest in the arts.