Dr. Hanns Hubach

Kunsthistorisches Institut
Rämistrasse 73
CH – 8006 Zürich
email:  e-mail@hanns-hubach.de

The former tapestry collection of the Electors Palatine 1400–1700

Within the frame of a larger and more general research project concerning the arts at the court of the Electors Palatine at Heidelberg (1400–1700), I am trying to assemble all pieces and documentary evidence of the Pfalzgrafen's former tapestry collection. This magnificent collection, which contained about 550 pieces in 1620, was split during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) and during the Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, when Heidelberg was pillaged by the troops of Louis XIV in 1689–1693. The main part of my study concerns the tapestry workshops at the Heidelberg Court, which were established as early as 1435 and kept producing tapestries until 1689.

Apart from that, I am preparing a major study on the reception and understanding of high medieval tapestries (12th and 13th centuries) in the early modern period (ca. 1450–1550).

Sigismund Meisterlins ‹Epistola de tapeciis antiquis› (1464) und die Funktion von Tapisserien als historische Beglaubigungsmedien im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert

My starting point is Sigismund Meisterlin's fairly unknown treatise on tapestries from the Murbach Monestary (I will edit a translation of the latin text) and I close my discourse with Dürer's woodcut of the Michelfeld-Tapestry, which to my knowledge is the first pictorial representation of an extant tapestry for its own sake.

Presentation of the project at the University of Bern: 24.02.2011, 19:15, Hallerstrasse 6, room 205

Sigismund-Flyer-PDF (PDF, 4 MB)

Bibliography

• «Tapisserien im Heidelberger Schloss 1400–1700. Grundzüge einer Geschichte der ehemaligen Sammlung der Pfälzer Kurfürsten», in: Tapisserien. Wandteppiche aus den Staatlichen Schlössern Baden-Württembergs, Weinheim, 2002: p. 98–103.
• «Kurfürst Ottheinrichs neuer hofbaw in Heidelberg. Neue Aspekte eines alten Themas», in: Volker Rödel (ed.), Mittelalter. Schloß Heidelberg und die Pfalzgrafschaft bei Rhein bis zur Reformationszeit, Regensburg, 2002: p. 191–202.
• «‹... mit golt, silber und seyd kostlichst, erhaben, feyn unnd lustig gmacht›. Pfalzgraf Ottheinrich und die Bildteppichproduktion in Neuburg 1539–1544/45», in: Bäumler, Suzanne/Brockhoff, Evamaria/Henker, Michael (eds.), Von Kaisers Gnaden. 500 Jahre Pfalz-Neuburg (Veröffentlichungen zur Bayerischen Geschichte und Kultur 50/2005), Augsburg, 2005: p. 174–187, p. 291–293.
• [book review] «Thomas P. Campbell (ed.), Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor», in: Studies in the Decorative Arts, 17, 1 (Fall-Winter 2009–2010): p. 198–201.