The Arcanum by Janet Gleeson

Author:Janet Gleeson [GLEESON, JANET]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780446564793
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-09-25T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

The Porcelain Palace

No handycraft can with our art compare

For pots are made of what we potters are.

Potter's motto, anonymous, 18th century

The fireworks that carved open the night sky proclaimed a royal marriage to the citizens of Dresden. The formal nuptials of the Saxon heir apparent, Frederick Augustus, and the emperors niece, Maria Josepha, had taken place at the Favorita Palace, Vienna, in 1719, after which the newly wed couple, accompanied by a vast and splendidly uniformed entourage, was escorted to Dresden.

With characteristic ostentation Augustus was determined that the entertainments he staged in the couple's honor would completely eclipse those Austria had put on. The festivities went on for weeks: orchestras played their most ravishing arrangements, operatic extravaganzas dazzled, theatrical performances were unrivaled, horse races thrilled vast audiences; citizens watched spellbound as the court arrived turbaned and clad in Oriental costume for a feast held in Augustus's exotic Turkish Palace; and a crowd of thousands were entertained by the spectacle of an animal fight in which bulls, boars and stallions ripped one another to pieces. But among the seemingly endless program of balls, banquets, masquerades and tournaments, the undoubted pièce de résistance was the extraordinary series of events Augustus staged in honor of seven planetary gods, beginning with the Festival of the Sun.

Augustus arranged this magnificent ceremony a week after the arrival of the happy couple in Dresden, on September 10, 1719.

The setting was not his primary official residence—the royal castle in the heart of old Dresden—but a far more spectacular and newly acquired royal palace. For while Böttger had lain at death's door, while Herold had busied himself mastering the art of painting on porcelain, and while Stölzel pondered longingly on how best to extricate himself from Vienna and return to Meissen, Augustus had been busy dreaming up plans for the most flamboyant porcelain extravaganza the world had yet seen: a palace made of porcelain.

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