Cast collection of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen
The cast collection of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen is a collection of historical plaster casts of sculptures from antiquity , which the Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen keeps. The collection is the oldest and one of the most important of its kind. It consists of more than 2,000 casts, the originals of which are distributed among more than 150 archaeological collections worldwide.
history
The history of the cast collection began in 1767 with the work of the classical philologist Professor Christian Gottlob Heyne . Heyne, who is considered to be one of the founders of modern classical studies, was the first to recognize the didactic possibilities of ancient works of art in teaching. However, because the originals were sometimes quite expensive, plaster casts had been popular in Europe since the Renaissance . Initially, however, these were mostly study models in artist studios and were used for the production of marble statues and bronzes. At first Heyne had to struggle with various problems. There was no budget for the collection, no premises and also no sufficiently large market for casts, neither in quantity nor in the required quality. First, Heyne acquired 18 casts of bronze portraits of Roman emperors and some other people of ancient intellectual life, whose models were in the Herrenhausen Gallery and some are still there today. These were not casts of originals, but casts of casts, which Heyne did not know. For a long time it was not clear why he acquired these 18 portraits of all things, as ancient portraits were not part of the canon of famous sculptures of antiquity. Today we know from Rudolf Erich Raspe's records that in addition to Heyne, the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel and the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin also acquired a set of the casts.
Thus, since only one negative form was required, these portraits were comparatively inexpensive. The Italian Ferrari brothers, who were to become some of the most important plaster molders, were apparently also involved in the production of the casts, which were made under the supervision of the court sculptor Johann Friedrich Ziesenis . A bust of Constantine the Great has been signed by one of the brothers. The brothers who settled in Leipzig later also supplied some of the casts for the collection. These included several casts of entire statues such as Apollo Belvedere , the Venus Medici , the Borghesian fencer and the Laocoon . Later, of all things, these works, which Heyne attached particular importance to because of their effect, had to be replaced by new casts because they were simply too blurred. In the course of time, this also affected other works that did not meet the requirements of teaching, such as the portraits from the workshop of the Rost brothers, which also worked in Leipzig in the last two decades of the 18th century. Their casts were on average better than those of the Ferraris, but both companies apparently use worn molds.
In 1781, as a gift from Count Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn, casts of sculptures from his collection, the oldest private antique collection in Germany, came to the institute. Other gifts came, for example, with a cast of the bust of Klytia von Raspe (1792) or from Friedrich Wilhelm Eugen Döll , whose gifts in 1802 were the last new additions to the collection in Heyne's time in Göttingen. In some cases the problem was the costs. For example , 20 thalers had to be paid for a cast of a re-creation of Silenus with the Dionysus boy , which was acquired in Bologna , but four times as much for the transport to Göttingen. The placement of the casts also caused problems. At first they were housed in the library rooms of the so-called college building. Thanks to Heyne's notes and other contemporary reports, the list could be reconstructed. The casts were distributed in at least seven library rooms. The statues were mostly in niches, the busts and heads on wall brackets. It seems that Heyne tried to establish links between the statues and the respective department of the library. The portraits of regents and politicians were in the historical hall, those of great intellectuals in the philological hall. The dying fencer and the fencer Borghese were placed in the medical hall. The latter statue was considered an anatomical model figure. It is unclear why the portraits of Caesar and Constantine also stood here. There is also no clear relationship between the depictions of women and the physical hall. The archaeological books were also located here and Heyne has held his archaeological lectures here every summer since 1767. In the Physikalisches Saal there were also busts of contemporary people such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Georg III. An explanation of the location of the Laocoon and Apollo of Belvedere in the legal hall and the Silenus with Dionysus child in the theological hall could not be found. Although the portraits had the side effect of being a worthy adornment of the library, the usability in this arrangement was limited, because not all portraits were available during the lectures on site.
The next impetus for the collection came from Karl Otfried Müller from 1823 . For example, he was able to acquire a faithful reproduction of the Venus de Milo from the Louvre . In addition, on Müller's initiative, the portraits were repositioned in the Paulinerkirche in 1823 , where the apse was also redesigned into a kind of lecture room on Müller's initiative. During the aegis of Müller's successor Friedrich Wieseler , the collection found a new location. In 1844 the casts were placed in the university's auditorium on Wilhelmsplatz. However, due to further purchases, such as the architectural jewelry for the Temple of Zeus at Olympia in 1877, the room there too quickly became too small. Parts of the collection had to be moved to the auditorium and even to the stairwell. In 1912, during Gustav Körte's tenure , the collection was finally displayed in the seminar building on Nikolausberger Weg, which was built at the same time. High exhibition rooms were created especially for the collection. New additions, for example, were the gable figures of the Temple of Aphaia from Aegina and architectural sculptures from Delphi . In 1930 the collection was significantly expanded by the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles , part of the Parthenon sculptures. Christof Boehringer , the first full-time curator of the collection, has fundamentally reorganized it since 1967. The collection has continued to be expanded continuously and in large numbers. The rooms had to be expanded with magazines for the heads and busts, and in 1986 another three rooms were added for high-class and classical statues and a hall for casts of Roman works of art in the former court auditorium.
Exhibitions
The publicly accessible collection is currently spread over two floors of the institute, each with several rooms. In addition, some sculptures are part of the permanent exhibition in the Paulinerkirche. There is no separate budget for the cast collection, it is directly connected to the classical archaeological institute and, along with the collection of originals and the numismatic collection, is one of the three collections managed by the institute. The curator of the collections is currently Daniel Graepler .
literature
- Klaus Fittschen (editor): Directory of the plaster casts of the Archaeological Institute of the Georg-August University of Göttingen. Stock 1767-1989. Goettingen 1990.
- Klaus Fittschen: Christian Gottlob Heyne and the Göttingen plaster cast collection , In: Daniel Graepler , Joachim Migl (ed.): The study of beautiful antiquity. Christian Gottlob Heyne and the emergence of classical archeology , Georg-August-Universität Göttingen - Lower Saxony State and University Library, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-930457-82-3 , pp. 89-99.
- Christof Boehringer: About the Göttingen collection of plaster casts of ancient sculptures. In: “Completely designed for studying.” The museums, collections and gardens of the University of Göttingen. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3892444528 , pp. 64-72.
Web links
- Presentation of the history of the cast collection on the website of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen
- Virtual tour through the collections
supporting documents
- ↑ Inventory number 687.
- ^ Daniel Graepler : The original collection of the Archaeological Institute, in: Dietrich Hoffmann, Kathrin Maack-Rheinländer (ed.): The museums, collections and gardens of the University of Göttingen, 2001, p. 60