The patron’s historized image attems’ family portraits and remp’s self-portrait in the brežice (Rann) castle

Abstract

In 1694, when Ignaz Maria, Count of Attems (Ljubljana/Ger. Laibach, 15 August 1652–Graz, 13 December 1732) had not yet built a town palace in Graz, he bought the Brežice (Rann) Castle. The castle became his most important residence for a good decade, which was reflected in the art commissions for the castle’s representational rooms. In 1702 and probably also in the following year, Italian trained painter Franz Carl Remp (Radovljica/Ger. Radmannsdorf, Carniola, 14 October 1674—Vienna, 23 September 1718) frescoed the entire Great Hall and painted six large oval canvases. In terms of content, two ovals with the Attems’ family portraits (presently Schloss Eggenberg, Universalsmuseum Joanneum, Graz) represented the center of the walls. The portraits were taken from the castle in the second half of the 19th century. Later they were cut into rectangles and stayed in the possession of the Attems family in Graz until 2010. No known sources state exactly the location of the paintings on the longer sides—the east and west walls of the Great Hall (Festsaal) in Baroque Brežice Castle. It seems most likely that both family portraits were placed in the middle of the hall, where Ignaz Maria, Count of Attems, with his sons and Maria Regina, Countess of Wurmbrand (Graz, 3 June 1659–Brežice/Ger. Rann, 24 April 1715), married Attems, with her daughter and sons, looked towards each other. Thus, the painting of Ignaz Maria was hung next to the full-figured self-portrait of Remp in fresco. The other, less likely possibility would be that a painting, titled in literature as the Allegory of Honors and Wealth (presently in the National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana) was hung in the center, next to Remp, while the family portraits were on its left and right side, each in the vicinity of their coat of arms on the frescos. The portraits of the children can be identified as a daughter and five sons, who were still alive when the painting of the hall was commissioned: depicted next to Ignaz Maria, Count of Attems, are his three eldest sons: Franz Dismas (1688), Thaddeus Caetanus (1691) and Innozenz Josef (1692). The patron, wearing an antique style of clothing, is depicted as an architect with a pair of compasses and a plan placed in his lap. The plan is reminiscent of the depictions of Graz from early modern times, for example the fresco in Cortile di Michelozzo in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. According to archival sources, Ignaz Maria participated as an architect in the construction and rebuilding of his residences. In the portrait, he is presented in the double role of an architect, as an (actual) creator, and a (symbolical) founder of the new Styrian family. He clearly presents his eldest son as his successor, his heir, holding the plan with which he symbolically receives properties from his father. The ermine trim of his clothing also gives him the leading position. The cannon on which Thaddeus Caetanus leans, is turned away from the viewer and is connected to the theme of Peace, which characterized numerous paintings of Attems, as well as the portrait of his wife. The youngest among the three, Innozenz Joseph, represents the compositional top of the triangular composition of “sons”. He became a Maltese Knight on 18 October 1701, to which alludes the white Maltese cross on the flag that is not red but yellow. Innozenz Joseph died as early as May 1702, when the painting in the Great Hall had only begun. His “seat” is associative of Christ’s open tomb, and alludes to the resurrection. Next to Maria Regina, Countess of Wurmbrand, are her daughter Henrietta Charlotte (1687) and the youngest sons Ernest Amadeus (1694) and Ferdinand Hyacinth (1697). The mother in an ermine trimmed dress is giving an olive branch, the symbol of peace (Pax) and mercy (Clementia), to her only daughter. Ernest Amadeus is holding two white doves in his lap with an olive branch in their beaks, personifying love and peace, while Ferdinand Hyacinth is holding a laurel wreath, the symbol of success and honor of the Attems family, with both hands. In the entire decoration of the Great Hall, Remp, wearing modern clothes and holding a painter’s palette and brush in his hand, is the only figure painting from the “present”, and shows the visitor the painted images of the patron’s family. A carefully planned arrangement of the paintings, with which the proud parents wanted to preserve for eternity the image of the artistically generous and ambitious family that prospers in peace and love, in connection to the painter’s self-portrait. Based on the function of the portraits, which were planned as a painted history, the members of the Attems family could be depicted younger than they were when the paintings were hung in the Brežice Great Hall. At the moment, we can only presume how profoundly the death of the young Maltese knight and other sons affected the iconography of the Hall. We can also cautiously set a thesis that besides wealth and honors, the family’s misfortunes and sadness are also reflected in the content of the ovals. As a historical person, Ignaz Maria, Count of Attems, the son of Johann Friedrich, Count of Attems, the vidame of Carniola, and his third wife Francesca Maria, née Marchioness Strozzi from Mantova, has been poorly researched, even though the preserved monuments and paintings placed him at the top of artistic patrons and collectors of the first third of the 18th century in Styria, and present him as one of the leading protagonists in Inner Austria in general. After completing his schooling with the Jesuits in Gorizia (Ger. Görz) and his studies at the University in Graz, it was undoubtedly important for Attems’ formation that he embarked upon a Grand Tour. At the moment, only his stay in Siena, where he registered in the book of German students on 18 July 1672, is documented. It is possible to assume that on his way from Graz, he visited numerous cities and, most likely, carefully looked at palaces and churches and their artworks. The question remains open of whether he, similarly to many of his contemporaries, such as the “model” princes of Styria, Johann Christian and Johann Seyfried von Eggenberg (1660–1663), also visited German, Swiss, Flemish and Dutch towns, as well as France, especially Paris, which next to Rome, Mantua and Florence, is highly reflected in Attems’ commissions of frescos by various painters. The family portraits present to the viewer a historized image of the Attems family, under the patronage and the generosity of which fine arts, depicted on the ceiling of the long vault, flourished. In preparing the concept for the fresco, Attems and Remp leant on numerous (print) models. Nevertheless, the image of the patron’s family created in oil technique and the painter’s self-portrait are a unique ensemble for which no direct source is known. Among the artworks that could be used as a model for the creation of the paintings in Brežice and Remp’s self-portrait, not only do Velazquez’s painting of the Infanta Margarita or his self-portrait with the family of the Spanish King Phillip IV subsequently entitled Las Meninas (1656) come to mind, but also Dutch and Flemish family portraits, as well as depictions of Louis XIV, among them especially Jean Nocret’s allegorical portrait of Louis XIV’s family (1670, Versailles), and the family portrait of Cologne banker Everhard Jabach (1660, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie) by Charles Le Brun. The young Attems, whose family on his mother’s side came from Mantua, was especially keen on Italian models, besides Guido Reni and Pietro da Cortona, who were an important source for painter Remp, Mantegna’s fresco of the Gonzaga family in the Sala degli sposi in Palazzo Ducale in Mantua and the frescos in Palazzo Vecchio: Cosimo I de’ Medici planning the conquest of Siena and Cosimo I with a pair of compasses, surrounded by artists can be mentioned as an inspiration. Based on the Brežice Great Hall frescos, the co-operation between the patron Attems and his court painter Remp is shown as one of the most fruitful in the lands of Inner Austria in the time of Baroque, and the family portraits from the Brežice (Rann) Castle as some of the most ambitious, and in terms of iconography, most interesting representations of the Styrian nobleman.