Page - 375 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

375An Object Lesson From the description of the dinner party and dance organized for the young Archdukes, cited above, we know the house contained at least one large hall or Saal. Its ample size is also indicated in Strada’s offer of the house for use by Ferdinand of Bavaria, where he described it as having ‘xii stufe con tutte le altre commodità che si puole immaginare’, that is twelve rooms heated by the traditional tiled stoves we have already seen in the Grosse Taflstube of the Hofburg [Fig. 5.71]. In view of its size—containing at least two wings of a piano nobile and a top floor, and workshops on the ground-floor—it is unlikely that on Daniel Suttinger’s plan of Vienna at the time of the second Turkish siege it had been ‘incorporated in a larger aristocratic palace’, as Renate von Busch suspected; if only because on that site no really large palace, such as the Stadtpalais Liechtenstein opposite, was ever constructed [Fig. 7.9]. In a bird’s eye view of Vienna during the 1683 siege, likewise by Suttinger, the house is recognisable in some detail: at that time it belonged to Count Adám Zrínyi [Fig. 7.6], and consisted of two wings at right angles to one another on the corner of the Vorderen Schenkenstrasse and the Löwelbastei. These are the ‘duoi truoti’ to which Fugger referred. They consisted of two principal floors over a ground floor, and had an entrance in the centre of the facade on the Löwelbastei. Part of the plot, on the corner of the Löwelbastei and the Hinteren Schen- kenstrasse, was occupied by two buildings, again of two floors, but of lesser height and depth. It is difficult to say whether this subsidiary part already ex- isted in this form in Strada’s time. Towards the neighbouring house the court- yard was limited by a long, narrow wing, which seems to be as high as the main block but, being narrow, is covered by a much lower roof. This plausibly could have housed a modest gallery on the level of the piano nobile. Around 1700 the house had passed to Maximilian Ernst von Wlaschim (Vlašim), who had it reconstructed: he doubled the size of the lower section on the Hinteren Schenkenstrasse, had it run up to the same height and had its facades adapted to those of the principal section. Here he moreover created a new, wider entrance with a porte cochère of a typically baroque plan. This new situation can be seen in Steinhausen’s plan of Vienna of 1710, which roughly indicates existing arcades and vaulted vestibules [Fig. 7.7]. In the middle of the eighteenth century it was acquired by Fürst Palm, who adapted the house and its immediate neighbours somewhat to his newly acquired status. As Palais Palm the complex played a certain role during the Congress of Vienna, as the temporary residence of two of the leading ladies during that concourse of Kings and Ministers, Wilhelmine Duchess of Sagan and Princess Catherine Bagration, both at different times mistresses of Metternich, while Princess Bagration functioned as hostess for Czar Alexander i: a story amusingly told in