Page - 391 - in Die kaiserliche Gemäldegalerie in Wien und die Anfänge des öffentlichen Kunstmuseums - Europäische Museumskultur um 1800, Volume 2

391 Meijers From an International Perspective than one regard we get the impression that the Belvedere complex had become histori- cized – a process by which the collections on display were given the function of a dynas- tic museum. Whereas it was lauded as long ago as the Mechel epoch for the links it evoked with its builder Prince Eugene of Savoy, for instance with a presentation of battles in the Unteres Belvedere,15 in this new era the whole development was being in a certain sense ‘museumi- fied’. This can be witnessed in around 1850 when the gallery’s director Peter Krafft had the fountains, gates and buildings restored to their original Baroque style dating back to the time of its heroic patron.16 And whereas in 1780 the two galleries in the Oberes and Unteres Belvedere already recalled the patronage of many generations of Hapsburgs, after 1815 this was intensified by the transfer of the former Ambras Kunstkammer with its many suits of armour, portraits and genealogical trees of ancestors testifying to the greater glo- ry of the Hapsburg dynasty. These tangible objects may have appealed more to people’s imaginations than mere paintings of battles, the more so because the Ambras collection had been evacuated in 1805 after the loss of Tyrol to Bavaria, and saved three times from confiscation by the French. Due to its history this Kunstkammer had inevitably become a memorial in the form of a museum, and this probably explained in part its great appeal to a wide public.17 (Fig. 8) Fig. 8 Carl Goebel, ‘Second Armoury Room’, watercolour 1875. On the right: the armour of Emperor Ferdinand I (Augsburg 1526). Vienna, Belvedere, Inv.no. 2802