Project Details
Projekt
Manifesting foreign rule: Xenocratic administration and its spatial-visual presence in the Southern Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Eva-Bettina Krems
Subject Area
Art History
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465372539
Regarding the widespread occurrence of xenocracy as a type of rule in the early modern period as well as the important role of symbolic communication for the creation and stabilisation of institutional orders in this epoch, the question of the mediation, legitimisation and perception of xenocratic rule relationships in the governed provinces by means of architectural and visual media is particularly urgent. The project approaches this topic, which has hardly been systematically investigated by art historians in the early modern period, using a concrete constellation of xenocracy as an example, which also experienced a change of suzerainty during the period under investigation: the governorship of the Southern Netherlands in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Subproject A is devoted to the Wittelsbach Elector Max Emanuel (governor 1692-1706) when the territory was still part of the possessions of the Spanish line of the Habsburgs (1522/56-1714), while subproject B examines the same region in the late 18th century, when it fell to the House of Austria after the War of the Spanish Succession (1714-1795). Of particular interest here is the period of administration of the plenipotentiary minister Georg Adam von Starhemberg (1770-83) under the governor Karl Alexander von Lothringen (1744-80) and the governor couple Marie Christine of Austria and Albert Kasimir of Saxony-Teschen (1780-93). This was a xenocracy under the conditions of cultural proximity, because there were already many entanglements and cultural exchanges between the Southern Netherlands and Spain and Austria. Nevertheless, concepts of foreignness has long been a constitutive element of the perception of rule. The spectrum of objects to be studied is diverse. It includes architectural and decoration projects as stages of ceremonial and ritual forms of action, in which foreign rule gained recognition on site and which provided a spatial and visual-medial framework for the interaction between rulers and ruled, but which at the same time could also set in motion independent processes of perception, reception and transformation: Palaces and country residences of governors and leading officials, portraits of rulers and officials together with their presentation from the palace to the print medium are of interest. In addition, mobile or ephemeral-performative forms of visual interaction and communication with the local population, for example in the context of festive culture and the cult of rulers (parades or receptions, but also medals) will be considered. On the basis of these materials, the dynamics of the exercise of xenocracy on site will be examined from a comparative perspective, as well as the role that architectural and visual media played in the representation of xenocratic rule and in the stabilisation or successive dismantling of the ascriptions of foreignness associated with it.
DFG Programme
Research Units
