Page - 298 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 5298 76 Girouard 1978, pp. 104–108. These also often showed eccentric forms; Girouard’s color plate ix illustrates a triangular lodge dating from 1595: an ancestor of the eighteenth- century ‘follies’. 77 Chmel 1840–1841, 2, p. 282: ‘Ante biennium clementissimus Rex Maximilianus magnificis sumptibus regiam plane domum magna coenaculorum et puteorum marmore incrusta- torum varietate, elegantissimis picturis, auro argento, aliisque vivis coloribus ornatissi- mam, in ingenti ac fere immenso campo inusitatae magnitudinis populis et quercubus refertissimo extrui curavit’. 78 Maximilian repeatedly used to disappear from Vienna for this purpose, for instance when he kindly but firmly dissuaded the Papal Nuncio, Stanislas Hosius, to follow him into the country. Hunting lodges such as Louis xiv’s Marly (ca. 1679–1684), Clemenswerth built for Clemens August, Elector of Cologne (ca 1737–1747) fit into this tradition, though Juvara’s a hunting event. In England a similar function was fulfilled by small lodges that were confusingly known as ‘banqueting houses’.76 Both as hunting lodges and as ‘banqueting houses’ Hvězda and the Prater Lusthaus played a role within the representation of the two archdukes, and perhaps of the Emperor him- self. This is obvious from the fact alone that both were sumptuously decorated: Hvězda with the still existent elegant stucco decorations, the Prater Lusthaus with stucchi, painting and precious marble: Two years ago King Maximilian had constructed at magnificent expense a truly regal house, filled with ample rooms and fountains inlaid in vari- ous marbles and richly decorated with most elegant painting in gold, sil- ver and other vivid colours, in the midst of a vast or rather immense area filled with poplars and oak trees of unusual size.77 But they provided the informal side of the necessary representation, geared to pleasure and otium, rather than formal representation of state, which con- centrated on pomp and magnificence. Madelon Simons therefore rightly ques- tions the role of Hvězda as an explicit ‘theatre of representation’. Occasionally Hvězda may well have played a role in official representation, but rather than a principal motivation for its construction, that was a coincidence, a corollary of its more personal, private function. Like La Muette, the English lodges and the Torre stellare of the Corte Castiglione, Hvězda and the Grünes Lusthaus offered their patrons a private retreat from the court, used for private study and contemplation, for physical exercise, and for private entertainment. A sort of weekend home used to recuperate from the pressure of affairs and to es- cape from the attentions of obsequious courtiers and importunate suitors.78 In his description of the Prater Lusthaus Georg Tanner explicitly formulates this combined function. Its function as a hunting lodge is clear from the descrip- tion of the woods which encircle the house on three sides,