Sounding the Bell of Peace: Architectural Prints and their Agency in the Thirty Years' War

• In Event: Art and the Thirty Years' War II

Abstract

In 1642 duke August the Younger of Braunschweig-Lüneburg was the first Protestant prince to make peace with the Habsburg Emperor. This delicate political process was to be concluded by regaining possession of the ducal residence of Wolfenbüttel. The duke’s festive entry into Wolfenbüttel in 1643 occasioned numerous poems from all over Germany, praising him as “Friedensfürst.” The duke commissioned a series of prints depicting the church of Beatae Mariae Virginis and its consecration ceremonies through his correspondent and advisor, the theologian Johann Valentin Andreae, from the engraver Sebastian Furck. While marking the positive outcome of the negotiations, these and other prints, medals, and even music pieces, were expressly intended to intervene in the ongoing military conflict in the rest of Germany, promoting a pacifistic-irenic agenda. This paper focuses on the rich correspondence between the duke and Andreae, giving us a rare insight into the intricacies and motivations of art patronage in a time of war.

Author

• Eelco Nagelsmit, University of Copenhagen