Page - 333 - in Die Repräsentation der Habsburg-Lothringischen Dynastie in Musik, visuellen Medien und Architektur - 1618–1918

Representation of the Habsburgs in Croatian Historical Lands 333 inviolabile fede verso il loro principe e signore, come ebbero la fortuna i loro maggiori di farli particolarmente in tale glorioso incontro conoscere.”14 As there is no need here to enter further into the details of Charles VI’s itinerary, it will suffice to say that all cities and towns he was planning to visit obtained a precise plan of his stay months before, and all of them eternalized this important moment in their history by producing some sort of a monument. In Rijeka, this was certainly by reconstructing the city tower and the city gate below it, and by adding the imperial busts to it, one of them old and the other new, yet adapted to the previous one in its proportions, and the base exhibiting the symbols of imperial and military power. The hypothesis about the appearance of the Rijeka tower and the Sea Gate on the occasion of the arrival of Charles VI may be corroborated by various visual materials that have been preserved – graphics made before 1728 and the painting named The Arrival of Emperor Charles VI in Rijeka (Fig. 3), completed shortly after that event. The broad panorama of this horizontally oriented painting is dominated by a veduta of Rijeka from the early eighteenth century, a time when the city was surrounded by walls with protruding roundels and a tall tower in the south. The city walls are sur- rounded by a moat filled by the waters of the Lešnjak rivulet. In the northern part of the city, on an elevation from which the coast and the estuary of the Rječina river could be monitored, one can see the castellum of Trsat and the church, accessible by means of a staircase built in 1531 by Petar Kružić, captain of Klis, in fulfilment of his vows.15 The key scene, showing Charles VI and his entourage as a long solemn Figure 3: Unknown author, Arrival of Emperor Charles VI in Rijeka, c. 1728, oil on canvas.