The Style of Schinkel, Illuminated

July 22 2011, 12:32pm

The present chandelier is executed in the distinctive style of Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841), perhaps the greatest German architect and designer of the nineteenth century and the leading arbiter of national aesthetic taste in his lifetime. Carlton Hobbs LLC   Schinkel studied architecture with the brilliant Friedrich Gilly (1798-1800) and at Berlin’s Academy of Architecture (1800-02), although much of his early career was occupied in gaining a reputation as a painter. After a number of years in Italy and some time in France, he returned to Berlin in 1805 where he turned more seriously to architecture. By 1815 he had risen to become Chief Architect of the Prussian Department of Works, executing many commissions for Frederick William III and other members of the royal family. Detail Schinkel’s designs were affected by the Gothic architecture he saw on his cultural tour through Austria, Italy and Germany between 1803 and 1805, a style which “represented the great counterweight to the intellectual and formal heritage of classical antiquity,” and “[offered] a more expressive and spiritual alternative to the antique ideal.” His early romantic inclination towards mediaevalism informed his ability to transform traditional Gothic forms into original compositions, as seen in both his architectural works and decorative arts designs. Figure 1a Figure 1b This example is related to chandeliers in both the Rotes Zimmer (Red Room) (figure 1a) and the Stickereizimmer (Embroidery Room) (figure 1b) at Schloss Fischbach, Silesia, for which Schinkel provided drawings and plans for the remodeling 1838. Similar chandeliers also hang in the Marmorsaal of Schloss Rosenau, Bavaria, which Schinkel redecorated in the Gothic Revival style between 1808 and 1817 as a summer residence for Duke Ernst I of Sachsen- Coburg-Saalfeld (figure 2). Figure 2 The chandelier is a particularly notable interpretation of the Gothic Revival taste, fluently combining as it does, motifs and forms which are unrelated to the idiom: the chains are most unusually rendered as naturally formed floral pendants, while the pierced panels set within the carrying ring, corona and main body evoke classical rinceaux, much in the manner of Schinkel. A further classicizing feature is the double-scrolling candle arms, which again can be found in Schinkel’s furniture and lighting oeuvre. Plate 54 in Johannes Sievers Die Möbel depicts a chair and sofa after a design by Schinkel employing this scroll motif (figure 3), while Plate 239 illustrates a chandelier whose candle arms are similarly scrolled (figure 4). Figure 3 Figure 4 This clever handling of opposing styles within a single object certainly indicates that the authorship of the design emanates from the pen of a highly-trained architect such as Schinkel himself or an accomplished contemporary, and its grand scale points to it having been commissioned for an important palatial scheme.