Page - 90 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

Kristoffer neville90 the foundation medal for Fischer’s Karlskirche in 1716. Benedikt Richter’s cousin, the painter David Richter the Elder, also left Stockholm at the end of the seventeenth century. After suc- cessful stays in Dresden and Berlin, he settled in Vienna around 1705, marrying there three years later as a Catholic. He found substantial success at court, and remained in the city until his death in 1735.8 The miniature painter, Charles Boit, was a more transitory presence in the city. But despite his short stay in Vienna, Boit painted a large enamel of Emperor Leopold I. and his fam- ily before moving on to London and Paris.9 The culmination of this artistic bond between the two courts is found in Martin van Meytens the Younger. Born in Stockholm to a painter who had emigrated from The Hague, van Meytens studied both in France and Italy before settling in Vienna as imperial painter from 1732, where he painted a long series of portraits of the Habs burgs and upper aristocracy. In 1759 he became head of the academy of art. This can be understood as an acknowledgement of his position in the artistic life of the court. His critical reputation matched his career: Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn, one of the leading critics of the eighteenth century, ad- mired him greatly and considered him an eight- eenth-century incarnation of Anthony van Dyck.10 Carl Gustaf Tessin thus arrived in Vienna in 1718 expecting to find a fairly large number of compatriots and acquaintances of his father. Heraeus quickly took the initiative to transform this common background into a regular cor- respondence, and even friendship, however. He showed Carl Gustaf Tessin a copy of the Entwurff in Vienna. Tessin described the work in full in a letter sent to his father, who wrote back immedi- ately, expressing great interest in Fischer’s work. Although the book was clearly conceptually complete – Tessin’s description lists every plate in the published version, in the correct order11 – it was not in a state that would have allowed him to take a copy home to Stockholm. Rather, Heraeus presumably promised to send a copy as soon as possible, and this arrived in March 1720, one year before the book was publicly available. THE ENTWURFF EINER HISTORISCHEN ARCHITECTUR IN 1720 The recently-recovered copy of the Entwurff sent by Heraeus to the Tessins clarifies many is- sues surrounding the completion of the work, but simultaneously raises important new ques- tions about the development of the project and Fischer’s plans for its publication. There can be no doubt about the provenance of the book, for it bears Carl Gustaf Tessin’s signature promi- nently on the title page (fig. 1). Numerous char- acteristics imply that it is an early version of the work, but one in particular links it to the Tessin collections in the early 1720s, and excludes the possibility that it was a later acquisition. In 1712, as Carl Gustaf Tessin was preparing to go abroad, Tessin the Younger published a catalog of his li- brary and graphic collections. This was intended in part to guide Carl Gustaf in his purchases abroad, which would supplement and update 8 B. Holmquist, Das Problem David Richter, Stockholm 1968. 9 G. Cavalli-Björkman, Svenskt miniatyrmåleri, Stockholm 1981 and G. Lundberg, Charles Boit 1662–1727, émail- leur-miniaturiste suédois, Nogent-le-Rotrou 1987. 10 C. L. Von Hagedorn, La vie de Mr. de Meytens à Vienne communiquée par lui-même, in: Briefe über die Kunst von und an Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn, Leipzig 1797, pp. 213–223, as well as B. Lisholm, Martin van Meytens d.y., Malmö 1974. 11 Two of the eighty-six plates were reversed in Tessin’s list. This is however a minor error, possibly a binder’s error or a copying error on Tessin’s part. Conceptually, the work was in the form it would take on publication in 1721.