Schwetzingen - Schlösser-Magazin

IV.
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Fig. 1: Northern quarter-circle
pavilion (Photo: Pechacek).
IV. Palace Gardens: Role and Significance
life, beautifully made and entirely gilt, cut a
splendid figure. In the middle of the garden
is a large basin of water, from the midst of
which, between a disorderly mass of boulders,
there rises a jet to a height of 40 foot, the
water works being driven by a special mill
and pump.”
In 1733 Giuseppe Marsano delivered 12
orange trees at a price of 50 guilders each,
but the condition of the potted plants was
deteriorating. This was, admittedly, due in
part to the lack of material required “for the
conservation of the orangerie”, although head
court gardener Betting was also blamed for
failing in his duty. In 1742, therefore, Jean
Baptiste Mourian offered “his most humble
services and science”, as “he possessed the
particular art, not only perfectly to restore the
musty oranges, but also throughout the year
and even in winter to produce all manner of
flowers and shrubs with their natural taste
and smell, of which he has provided diverse
examples in Munich and Carlsruhe.”
Mourian was first appointed court gardener
in Mannheim and then, after the death of
head gardener Johann Betting in 1747, he was
awarded the position at Schwetzingen. On 20
June 1747 Mourian listed the Schwetzingen
inventory, naming – among other things – 866
orange trees, 65 “trellis oranges”, 226 “grenades”
(pomegranates) and another 34 species.
We can glean some information about the
state of the Schwetzingen orangery prior to
1747 from Nikolaus Betting, the son of head
gardener Johann Betting. He portrays the
little palace garden so praised and admired by
other landowners and horticultural experts
as an “orange square”. He writes of a “regular
grove of bitter oranges and lemons, trees and
hedges ... the like of which is rarely found
even in the princely gardens of Colorno and
all’Imperiale in Italy.” He singles out the sweet
fruits of the “pommes de Sina” and the sour
“lemons and limes”, noting that these fruits
had their uses in making confectionery. “The
Elector’s greenhouse boasted many Levantine
coffee trees which bore such an abundance
of coffee beans as were needed for the
consumption of the most elevated personages
in the most genteel of societies.”
The Quarter-Circle Pavilions
Work on the northern quarter-circle pavilion,
to plans by chief architect Alessandro Galli da
Bibiena, began in 1748. Guillaume d’Hauberat,
who succeeded Bibiena that same year, quickly
forged ahead with the project, aided by his
master-builder Franz Wilhelm Rabaliatti, and
as a result the building was finished by spring
1750. Whereas the first section of the orangery
was so placed as to permit future extensions
of the Schwetzingen palace garden from east
to west and from north to south, the location
of the second depended on the position
and size of a proposed new palace building.
Once this project had been discarded, court
gardener Johann Ludwig Petri, who had been
at Schwetzingen since 1752, agreed with
Rabaliatti that the second orangery building
should take its place south of the palace in a
symmetrical arrangement with the first. 1 As
the windows along the main facade had to
face north-west, a few more windows were set
in the rear wall to improve the lighting. 2
Unlike the northern pavilion, with its simply
furbished rooms used mainly to house
1 GLA 221/19 “4 May 1755 appointment of the orangery wing”.
2 GLA 221/19 “16 July 1755 Petri believes six to eight windows to
be necessary at the back of the first pavilion for ventilation in
winter”.