Knowledge space, materiality, and dynamics of transfer around 1700: The print albums of Prince Eugene of Savoy

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Eva-Bettina Krems
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 546340486

The project is centered on Prince Eugene of Savoy's (1663–1736) collection of prints, comprising around 280 albums (“Klebebände”). These were compiled in Paris from 1717 by Jean Mariette and his son Pierre-Jean, bound in Vienna and housed and presented as part of the library in the prince's Viennese city palace. This impressive convolute of bound volumes (in the Albertina in Vienna since 1920), which in contrast to many other collections of print albums has been unusually well preserved, represents a very wide-ranging and highly sophisticated princely collection of paramount importance for the pre-modern period. Acquired by Charles VI for the imperial court library around 1737, the collection provided the basis for Adam von Bartsch's Le Peintre Graveur in the early 19th century. The latter established the internationally recognized canon of pre-modern prints and thus continues to shape collecting concepts at museums and libraries as well as research to this day. The collection of Prince Eugene has so far only been dealt with sporadically in individual studies. The project aims to systematically research this collection for the first time, with a particular focus on the relationship between the volumes sorted according to schools (Œuvres) and subject areas (Recueils par Matières). The project pursues four objectives, focusing primarily on the period under Prince Eugene and thus the original state of the bound volumes: Firstly, the selected volumes will be explored with regard to materiality and codicological questions as an important form of collection and presentation and, in particular, the bound tables of contents will be examined more closely. Secondly, the overarching historical classification of the collection and classification of the individual volumes will be analyzed in comparison to contemporaneous theoretical positions. Thirdly, it will be discussed to what extent the bound volumes, as "imagines" of the Bibliotheca Eugeniana, formed a “Wissensraum” (space of knowledge) together with the manuscripts, printed books and portrait collection that were also kept in this library, and were thus part of a structure in which knowledge was organized and represented in material and symbolic form. Fourth, Eugene's collection can be used to analyze key aspects of the European transfer of culture and knowledge, its dynamics and the manifold processes between courtly representation and economy. In the early 18th century, print albums proved to be important instruments within the courtly and aristocratic rivalry for cultural hegemony and distinction. The project is implemented in close cooperation with the Albertina in Vienna, which will digitize a selection of the volumes to be researched.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants