Lot 61 Dα

Three paintings from the Brandenburgiana cycle by Bernhard Rode



Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, the eldest brother of Frederick the Great and father of the later Prussian King Frederick William II, commissioned a series of 14 paintings depicting the history of Brandenburg from the Berlin painter Bernhard Rode in around 1757 (see Rainer Michaelis: exhib. cat. "Fridericiana, Christian Bernhardt Rode (1725-1797)", Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, 1999, p. 14-19). From this cycle, known under the name Brandenburgiana, we offer three paintings.

The original fourteen works begin in 1322 with a scene from the life of Burgrave Friedrich IV of Nuremberg (lot 62 of this auction) and span the arc with a depiction of the siege of Stralsund by King Friedrich Wilhelm I until the year 1715. "With this cycle, Rode was inspired by Frederick the Great, who in his 'Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la maison de Brandebourg', published in 1751, had added to each of the preceding Hohenzollern rulers an illustration designed by Blaise Nicolas Lesueur and etched by Georg Friedrich Schmidt." (Helmut Börsch-Supan, expertise from 3.5.2010). Rode's cycle of paintings was probably intended for the decoration of Oranienburg Palace. However, when their patron August Wilhelm of Prussia died in 1758, the series was not yet completed and Rode finished the missing works by 1763. Five years later, he commissioned Daniel Chodowiecki to make etchings of twelve of the fourteen paintings for the Berlin calendar of 1769. Rode showed the complete cycle of paintings in 1786 at the first exhibition of the Berlin Academy (no. 9-22). Until then, the works were still the property of the artist. In 1925, the paintings then passed from the possession of a Berlin lawyer, Dr. Max Salomon, to the Berlin art dealer Auerbach, who in turn sold them to Sweden through the mediation of the director of the Art History Museum in Lund, Dr. Karlin (cf. Michaelis, op. cit. p. 41, note 75), where they recently resurfaced.
"For the history of patriotic history painting in Prussia, the cycle possesses outstanding significance." (Helmut Börsch-Supan, op. cit.).



On 18th January 1701, Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg crowned himself King Frederick I of Prussia by his own hand in the audience hall of Königsberg Palace. After crowning his wife Sophie Charlotte as queen, the couple went to the service in the palace church with the entire court. Rode's painting depicts the anointing during the service. Frederick I is shown kneeling in the centre of the picture, having laid down his crown and sceptre on a cushion, receiving the anointing oils from the Reformed Bishop Benjamin Ursinus, assisted by the Lutheran High Court Preacher Bernhard von Sanden. The queen and crown prince, the later "soldier king" Friedrich Wilhelm I, are depicted on the right.
Verso on the stretcher an adhesive label with the handwritten inscription "Auerbach / Berlin / Anhaltst 19".