Schwetzingen - Schlösser-Magazin

IV.
Fig. 4: Obelisk, north half of the
circular parterre’s transverse
axis, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt,
1762-69 (Photo: Scholl).
70
IV. Palace Gardens: Role and Significance
by the similar Temple of Vesta in Tibur
(Tivoli) which, although it has a cella, is in a
ruinous state.
The bath house begun in 1768 to a design
by Nicolas de Pigage was a carefully shielded
retreat with its own garden, where Carl
Theodor was able to pursue his own interests
with informal privacy. 12 The maison de
plaisance, with an oval hall at its centre,
living rooms and a bathing area, adopted
Palladian villa architecture, notably Vincenzo
Scamozzi’s La Rocca Pisani near Lonigo (1576)
and Lord Burlington’s Chiswick House near
London (1726), the manifesto of the English
Palladian style. This kind of Classicism was
new in the south-west of Germany. There is
a glimpse of associations with Antiquity, too,
when the “Etrennes Palatines” for 1769 note
that the new bathing facility “dans le goût
des Anciens” will be known as the “Thermes
Théodoriques”. 13
12 Wagner 2006, p. 59ff.
13 Etrennes Palatines Pour l’Annee 1769, quoted in Wagner 2006,
p. 104.
Pigage demonstrates his originality, even by
European standards, by drawing on Antique
forms for the two porticos. 14 For the first time
on an exterior façade, they fuse the structural
philosophy of a templum in antis with that
of an exedra in a Roman therma sectioned
off by columns. Originally designed to be
open at the top, they were roofed over during
construction. 15 Pigage was probably inspired,
not by direct studies of Ancient buildings,
but by allusions to the Ancients in the very
latest interiors of English stately homes,
such as the Painted Room in Spencer House,
London (James Stuart, 1758) or the Library at
Kenwood, Hampstead (Robert Adam, 1759).
The anglophile Elector may well have wielded
his influence here. 16 The English models, in
turn, take their reading of the Ancients from
Palladio. 17 The finishing of the two intradas
with the sculptural moulds in the niches lends
a further touch of Antiquity: to the north the
Apollino and Idolino, and in the southern
anteroom the satyr with the little goat and
Verschaffelt’s neo-Classical Cupid.
Pigage’s Temple to Minerva, which according
to the “Etrennes Palatines” for 1769 was
already completed that year, ranks, alongside
the advanced buildings in the Garden Realm
of Dessau-Wörlitz, among the earliest creations
of Early Classicism in Germany. Minerva,
goddess of Wisdom, is also portrayed here as
the goddess of peaceful arts and sciences, in
particular the art of garden design. 18
14 Wagner 2006, pp. 206-214.
15 Hartmann Manfred Schärf: Die Dächer des Badhauses im
Schwetzinger Schlossgarten, in: Badische Heimat. vol. 82, 2002,
pp.158-173, here: pp. 164-165.
16 Wagner 2006, pp. 215-219.
17 e.g. via the anteroom floor plan for the so-called Temple
to Minerva Medica in the “Quattro libri” and above all via
Palladio’s reconstructions of Roman thermae (Andrea Palladio:
I quattro libri dell’architettura. Venedig 1570, IV, pp. 40-41;
Andrea Palladio: Les Thermes des Romains dessinées par
André Palladio & publ. de nouveau d’après l’esquisses du Lord
Comte de Burlington, impr. à Londre en 1732/avec quelques
observations par Octave Bertotti Scamozzi. Vicenza 1797).
18 Heber 1986, pp. 557-568; Fuchs/Reisinger 2001, pp. 128-132;
Monika Scholl: Arion und Minerva – Schnäppchen für Schwetzingen?
Zur Bedeutung der Schwetzinger Gartenausstattung,
in: Snoek/Scholl/Kroon 2006, pp. 125-148, pp. 138-143; Wagner
2006, pp. 44-51.