Germany as we know it today did not exist in the Versailles Century (1682-1789).  The second German Empire (1871-1918), which brought the various German states together into the single national structure that we now call Germany, did not come into being until many decades after the final departure of Louis XVI and his family from Versailles in October, 1789.

In the Versailles Century, Germany was more a geographical region than a country.  It was part of the Holy Roman Empire, which also included the territory of the countries that we now know as Belgium, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia, as well as parts of present day France, Italy, and Poland.

Here is a map of the Empire in 1789:

The Holy Roman Empire in 1789. Credit: Wikipedia.

By this time, the Emperor had little authority outside his own hereditary territories.  As Voltaire quipped, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor even a real empire.

I didn’t mean to buy the November issue of Architectural Digest, I really didn’t, but I just couldn’t resist the travel feature.  It’s a 3-page spread about the Palazzina Cinese, a gem of a chinoiserie villa in Palermo.

The first page of the AD spread on the Palazzina Cinese.

By strict chronological reckoning, the chinoiserie decor of the Palazzina Cinese falls outside the 1682-1789 timeframe of the Versailles Century because it dates from after 1800.  The spirit of chinoiserie, however, is decidedly 18th century, so I rule it within bounds.  Basta!

The villa was purchased as a holiday home by King Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily* after he arrived in Palermo in 1799.  He’d been driven out of Naples by a republican uprising.  Fortunately, his other kingdom, Sicily, remained loyal.  He and his wife Maria Carolina, sister of Marie-Antoinette, settled down to life in Sicily, which included decorating their new folly.  They promptly settled on a decorative scheme in the ‘Chinese’ taste.

Actually, the rooms feature not just chinoiserie, but also turcquerie, which you can make out in the picture at top left on the second page of the article (see below).

The second page of the AD spread on the Palazzina Cinese.

You can read the full article with its high-quality photos on the AD website.  Check it out here: http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/palermo-italy-casina-cinese.

*The 2 kingdoms were merged in 1816, after which the unified state was called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

In this edition of VC Museum Visits, we tour the Museum-School of Portuguese Decorative Arts in Lisbon.

Located in the shadow of an ancient Moorish wall in the hillside district of Alfama, this exquisite museum is run by the Ricardo Espirito de Santo Silva Foundation.*  It’s housed in the former palace of the Viscounts of Azurara, which the late Senhor Espirito do Santo Silva (1900-1955), a banker and lavish patron of the arts, purchased in 1947 specifically for the purpose of creating a museum.  A lifelong admirer of Alfama, Lisbon’s most historic district, he was also keen to preserve the skills and traditions of the artisans who lived in the area, hence the inclusion of a school in the foundation.

I knew I was going to love it as soon as I saw what was in the vestibule.

A Cinderella-like 18C carriage in the vestibule.

Today we pay another visit to Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA)* to have a look at Fragonard’s ‘The Two Cousins.’  As I’ve said in a previous post, Portugal is actually a great place to see French fine and decorative art because the Portuguese aristocracy collected it with such enthusiasm.

Fragonard’s ‘The Two Cousins’ as seen in the MNAA.

Having devoured Nancy Mitford’s Frederick the Great, which gave me a burning desire to visit Potsdam, the site of Frederick’s beloved palace of Sans Souci, I became curious about the  other people and places mentioned in the book.  For instance, this man Voltaire.  Who was he?  And Madame de Pompadour?  Cardinal de Fleury?  None of these people were showing up in our weekly viewings of The Remarkable Life of Friedrich von der Trenck.

Sans Souci

It occurred to me that Miss Mitford might have written other books.  Returning to the library, I looked up her other works in the card catalogue.  Sure enough, it listed Madame de Pompadour and The Sun King.

I loved the sparkle and wit of her prose, even as a 10-year-old.  Of course, a good deal of her wit went over my head.  I also loved her personal insights.  I noticed, for instance, that in The Sun King she was able to offer a first-hand comparison of the toilet facilities at Versailles and Buckingham Palace, which then, unlike now, was not open to the general public.

Since the great courtesan was Frederick’s contemporary, I decided to borrow Madame de Pompadour first.  Thus it was that I discovered the teeming, scheming labyrinth of Versailles in the mid-18th century.

I remember exactly when my lifelong preoccupation with the 18th century began.

When I was 10 years old, my parents, who had emigrated from Berlin to our small city in Ontario, took me to our local German-Canadian club on a Wednesday evening to watch the first instalment of what I later learned was a 1972 German television series called The Remarkable Life of Frederick, Baron von der Trenck.*  In those pre-downloading, pre-DVD, even pre-VCR days, we sat on folding chairs in the club’s dance hall to watch the show on a large portable screen, as if it were a home movie.

The 6-part series follows Trenck’s soldierly and romantic adventures through the courts of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Elizabeth of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria, as he navigates the 2 great conflicts of the mid-eighteenth century, the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War.  I was enthralled from start to finish, and would fidget impatiently through the dull preliminary featurettes that preceded each weekly instalment.  Though I boyishly admired Trenck’s manly exploits, the character who really transfixed me was Frederick II of Prussia, whom my parents, good Berliners, invariably and affectionately referred to as der Alte Fritz (Old Fred).

Frederick the Great