Schwetzingen - Schlösser-Magazin

IV. Palace Gardens: Role and Significance
a)
The Iconography of the
Schwetzingen Palace Gardens
The palace gardens at Schwetzingen are
significant in many respects as a work of art
in themselves. The late Baroque garden was
inspired by the Régence, its shapes carefully
balanced and the parts subjected to decorative
but strict coordination. 1 The style is Classical,
with none of the exotic furbishing so typical
of the day. The landscaped extensions
were carried out when this genre was in its
early phase in Southern Germany, and in
their own way they pioneered it. Friedrich
Ludwig Sckell’s first work, his meadow
valley, was to have a historical impact on
further developments. There is evidence that
this theme influenced Lenné’s designs for
Sanssouci. 2
In Schwetzingen, then, two different views
of gardens and the place of nature are
artistically interwoven, merging to express
the typological ideal for a princely residence
in the 18 th century. Within the space of a
generation, a relatively homogenous work
was to emerge, and leading garden designers
of the age were involved, not only in its
creation but, at the turn of the next century, in
initiating conservatory measures. It is to this
fact that the garden owes some of its great
authenticity.
The gardens boast a collection of sculptures
from the latter half of the 18 th century rarely
equalled in its range by other European
gardens. It consists of some 280 decorative
specimens of plastic art. These include statues,
groups, busts and ornate vases of varying size
and versatile technique: gilded lead, chiselled
lead castings, bronze, marble, sandstone, iron
castings, driven iron sheeting, not to forget
the sandstone benches and tables. Among
1 Wiltrud Heber: Die Arbeiten des Nicolas de Pigage in den ehemals
kurpfälzischen Residenzen Mannheim und Schwetzingen.
Manuskripte zur Kunstwissenschaft, vol. 10., 2 vols. Worms
1986.
2 Adrian von Butlar: Der Landschaftsgarten. Gartenkunst des
Klassizismus und der Romantik. Köln 1989. p. 210.
the highlights of the features adorning the
Schwetzingen gardens, however, are the
seven small pieces of architecture known as
the “fabriques”, complex masonry buildings
which appeared within a period of about 20
years. Together, the sculpture and architecture
reflect a universe of explicitly Enlightenment
thinking, thus representing one of the major
social currents of the 18 th century. 3 Against
a backcloth of Baroque utopias such as the
return of the Golden Age, largely allegorical
in character, basic concepts such as Nature,
Tolerance and Reason gradually found form in
the gardens, notably in the park architecture
and the associated iconographic programmes.
Readings of Antiquity in the Park Buildings
All Classicistical architecture is founded on a
response to Antiquity. Traditional European
building derives its forms, types and design
principles from Ancient prototypes or else
sees itself as developing these further. Since
the Renaissance, architects had felt a duty to
respect Antique models by imitating them,
and they saw themselves as part of a great
tradition that had temporariliy been disrupted
by the Middle Ages. The new quality to the
neo-classicism that began to emerge after
the middle of the 18 th century is not so much
its reference to Antiquity as such, as its
perception of Antiquity as part of the flow
of history and its critical reappropriation
of ancient and recent architecture with that
awareness of historical distance.
Even before the mid-18 th century, Germain
Boffrand and Jacques-François Blondel
had attacked the Rococo decoration that
undermined fundamental tectonic structures
3 The influence here of Freemasonry and other exotic bodies of
thought have recently been studied in this context. These ideas
also found their supporters at the court of the Elector Palatine,
and there is evidence that some of his close associates were
active Freemasons. Currents of Enlightenment philosophy can
be expressed in multiple layers of symbol. Indications of this
intellectual background may be motifs such as the compass,
angle or shining star, but equally architectural quotations –
like the mosque minaret – or structural features such as the
pervasive vaulting of the temples (allusion to “cryptic content”).
The research has not yet consolidated the evidence of Masonic
references, but notwithstanding any future findings, the
Schwetzingen palace gardens offer an excellent iconography
of Enlightenment thinking still in an outstanding state of
preservation.
IV.
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