Page - 442 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 9442 and Matthias and his good friend Duke Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel taking a walk in a wood on the outskirts of Vienna; in the background, through the threes, can be seen a huge complex of towers, walled gardens and a huge gallery. This is the Neugebäude, the huge complex begun in 1568 by Rudolf’s father close to the castle at Kaiserebersdorf, hardly visible in background to the left. The painting gives a good impression of the size and the context of the complex, on the southern edge of the Donauauen, the meadows bordering the Danube to the east of Vienna, between the village of Simmering and the Impe- rial hunting lodge at Kaiserebersdorf. With the Prater, immediately across the branch of the Danube to the north—past the left margin of the painting—this territory formed the principal hunting preserve for the Emperor, his guests and his court, which explains the construction of his new Lusthaus in this area. The exact site of the building, moreover, is perfectly suited to its purpose, as stated in Fugger’s letter: its principal element, the long gallery, is constructed exactly on the edge of a ridge sloping steeply down towards the meadows. Before the twentieth century it afforded a wonderful view over the hunting grounds, the river landscape and far beyond. The order in which the various elements of the complex were built and the extent to which it was actually finished at Maximilian’s untimely death in 1576 can be partially reconstructed on the basis of Hilda Lietzmann’s archival re- search as published in her 1987 monograph, and the results of archaeological research and technical analysis of the remaining fabric done around and since that time, which however have been only published in abstracts.18 From this information it appears that two years after Maximilian had begun his ‘Fasan- garten’, his bird-preserve in the Donauauen, he began realizing his plans for a new and large garden complex close to Kaiserebersdorf. Payments suggest that the site had been surveyed and the plan laid out towards the end of 1568, when the engineer Hans Gasteiger was ordered to procure iron pipes for the water conduits of the gardens, and that building began early in 1569. The engraving by Matthäus Merian of 1649 [Fig. 9.17] gives a more precise impression of the composition of the complex, and helps to visualize its gene- sis.19 The complex is symmetrically arranged around a north-south axis—that Wied 1971, p. 159, Abb. 144 and p. 204, Kat. Nr. 55; Wied 1990, pp. 169–170, Kat. Nr. 68; Wied 2004, pp. 244–245; Griemann 2008, pp. 16–24. 18 This summary is based on Lietzmann 1987; Seebach/Schreiber 1989; Wehdorn 2004. 19 What is probably the original print is illustrated in Lietzmann 1987, p. 13, Fig. 3; Ilg 1895, p. 109, illustrates the slightly divergent version taken from Hortorum viridarumque noviter in Europa praecipue adornatum elegantes et multiplices formae ad vivum delineatae, pub- lished by the Cologne printers Overadt in 1655. Here the cartouche with the legenda is