Seite - 99 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Band LIX

Fischer von Erlach’s Entwurff einer historischen Architectur 99 the sources for many of the reconstructions in the book. His post allowed him to give Fischer free access to the Habsburg collections, enabling him to supplement what he had seen in Rome years earlier. He presumably offered his exper- tise as well. It must be for this reason that the plate of the Colossus of Rhodes was reworked at some point between 1712 and 1721 to add another visual footnote: a second recto and verso of an ancient coin showing the monument (figs. 4, 5).37 This is the only instance of this kind of anti- quarian intervention in Fischer’s finished work.38 Heraeus may nonetheless have been the source of a more general planned revision of the book that would have delayed publication. Many of the images had been in preparation for years, and the framework and goals were laid out clearly by 1712, and perhaps as early as 1710, cement- ing the form of the work before Heraeus could have become deeply involved. He may have proposed expanding the book textually, how- ever, transforming it from an image-book of reconstructions and contemporary works into a scholarly work more comparable to Bellori’s publications – a prospect that may well have appealed to Fischer, who began his antiquarian studies in Bellori’s collections. This would have allowed an enormous expansion in the ambition of the work without changing the parameters or historical structure set out in the title page. In- deed, the written component accompanying the first two books is an impressively full discussion of the monuments, but incomplete. The inscrip- tion accompanying the image of the mosque of Suleyman III in Book Three refers the reader to the text, which was never supplied.39 Heraeus’s precise role in the development of the Entwurff remains very unclear. He evidently was not as involved in the conceptual gestation of the book or the architectural reconstructions as has often been assumed, since he made no claim to this and the work seems to have been largely done by the time he became involved. His formal involvement seems to have been limited to the text, which was a complementary but somewhat distinct undertaking, and a few relatively minor corrections and additions to the images. Yet, he seems to have remained involved in some way throughout, for all correspondence regarding the book went through him, and he evidently had the authority to give Carl Gustaf Tessin access to the work in 1718 and again in 1720. Perhaps he was ultimately as much a friend and advisor to Fischer as a collaborator in the project. 36 Zirnbauer, Johann Adam Delsenbach (cit. n. 22), pp. 290–292. 37 Very likely this adjustment was made quite late, since the Tessins’ copy of the Entwurff contains the unrevised image. 38 The only other interventions in earlier plates are the erasure of the engraver Benjamin Kenckel’s signature on a number of the early plates; the reworking of the Domus Aurea of Nero; and the view of the Trautson garden palace, in which the date was changed from 1710 (in the Vienna manuscript and the Tessins’ copy of the book) to 1711 (in all published editions). This may be related to the elevation to prince of the empire of the patron, Johann Leopold Donat von Trautson. It was likely in response to this that the Ionic order on the façade was reworked as a composite order. See A. Kreul, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. Regie der Relation, Salzburg 2006, p. 248. 39 The inscription on the view of the mosque of Sultan Suleyman III (Book Three) includes the note: NB: Die genauere Erklärung der Ziffern, ist in der beschreibung zu suchen (the more precise explanation of the numbers is to be sought in the description), indicating that an extended text was to have accompanied the third book, and likely the whole work. The incomplete nature of the text is emphasized by Lorenz, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (cit. n. 1), p. 43.