BAROQUE
MUSEUM – SALZBURG
Art Inspiration and the Bozetti Draft
The Baroque Museum in Salzburg (Salzbuger Barockmuseum), found just
at the edge of the famed Mirabell Gardens, perhaps recognized from
the outdoor dancing scenes of the Sound of Music movie, is a small
and intimate museum in the former Orangerie in the southern wing of
the Mirabell Palace of Emperor Franz Joseph. Not perhaps the expected
large ornate art works the name implies, but a museum mostly consisting
of work sketches of great artists of the period from the 17th Century
to early 18th Century when the claustrophobic defensive castle life
of the nobility of Europe turned to great elaborate palaces (see Dresden
Zwinger).
Kurt
Rossacher was the son of an art dealer from Graz who studied art in
Prague and had a fascination with Germanic art history. He founded
the Vienna and Salzburg Antique Fairs. He started collecting small
size sketches of larger works, intrigued by the Baroque style which
was an expression of pure luxury. His many pieces of often unaccredited
art intended as studies and blueprints to scale up for sculptures or
major paintings of masterly composition and impetuous brush stroke
formed
the basis of the collection at the Baroque Museum.
Founded in 1973, the Baroque Museum of Salzburg is the only museum
in Europe dedicated to the "birth of an artwork," the inspiration
and first draft so to speak. The work on display is from of the private
collection of Kurt Rossacher and his wife Else, donated to the city
of Salzburg for the public enjoyment and education. The collection
included drawings, studies and paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Maffei,
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Cortona, the local
Austrian artist Johann Michael Rottmayr who brought the Italian fresco
form north of the Alps, Francesco Guardi, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard,
who swung into the Rococo period.
The Baroque designs used for paintings, altarpieces, frescoes, engravings
or sculptures and monuments. The large frescos and massive painting
panels seen in palaces, churches (see Dom Quartier Tour Salzburg) and now found in other art museums
included the hands of a cadre of artists working under the direction
of the master, but the original sketches, or sculptural models of wood
in small scale, the bozetto or maquette, were purely from the hand
of the master artist himself without participation of apprentices or
other artists, though the sketches and model work were generally unsigned.
Many can only be attributed to after years of research and some are
even the only remaining evidence of a larger work, long since destroyed,
by fire, war damage or demolition.
Visiting the Baroque Museum Collection Rossacher
The museum is open Wednesday to Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm. Admisssion for adults is €4.50, students and seniors €3.70, and children under 14 are free. The museum enttrace is included in the Salzburg Card. It is easy to stop in while wandering the gardens with its fountains and arbors. © Bargain Travel Europe
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