Second Belvedere

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Second Belvedere on the Elbe side
Second Belvedere on the garden side

The Second Belvedere was a rococo building on the Brühlsche Terrasse in Dresden and was the second of the four buildings at this location . It was built from 1749 to 1751 under Heinrich Graf von Brühl by Johann Christoph Knöffel and was one of the Brühl's glories . It formed the climax of the Dresden Rococo.

history

The ruins of the former Belvedere 1760–1814

Construction of the second Belvedere began in 1748 after Heinrich Graf von Brühl had the maiden bastion assigned to him. After a construction period of three years, the external appearance of the Belvedere was completed. The expansion lasted until 1753. In 1759 the Belvedere was destroyed in the Seven Years War .

description

Second Belvedere painted by Canaletto
cut

The floor plan of the building on the first floor consisted of four rooms of different shapes and sizes. An elliptical front and main building formed the main axis. Two rectangular rooms flanked the porch on either side and were installed in the spandrels of the two elliptical buildings. Contributing artists were Giuseppe Bossi as a plasterer , Johann Gottfried Knöffler as a sculptor , Johann Engelhard as a marbler and Joseph Deibel as a carver . Knöffler designed the two sphinxes , which were the only ones to survive the destruction of the second Belvedere and which can now be found next to the staircase on the garden side.

vestibule

A spacious outside staircase led across the garden to a small, oval anteroom. The open staircase was stepped into three large parts and had an elliptically curved floor plan. The porch, like the outside staircase, had an elliptical floor plan and served as a vestibule. The vestibule had French doors with a straight top. The building had a flat ceiling with a "very strong valley". The ceiling painting in the vestibule was created by Stefano Torelli .

Large ballroom

From the small porch one entered the main building, which was twice the size of the porch and 17 meters long. The main building consisted of the ballroom and, like the staircase and the porch, had an elliptical floor plan. The ballroom had five tall French windows that opened on the Elbe side. With a vertex of 12 meters, the ceiling of the ballroom was so high that it arched into the roof structure. The French doors of the ballroom were significantly higher than those of the vestibule and had rounded arches . Between the French windows there were pilasters on the wall that supported the cranked beams . Above the entablature there were fully plastic stucco work in "very moving forms with female figures". This stucco decoration formed the framework for a large ceiling painting made by Louis de Silvestre. However, as soon as the entablature reached the curved side walls of the window doors, "[these] descended in the curved reveals like a volute towards the transom of the window doors". The decoration was the "high point of the Dresden Rococo", which continued Pöppelmann's late baroque Zwingerstil and incorporated the French hotel style in the interior design. On both sides of the porch there were two rectangular rooms with sloping building corners. These were built in the spandrels of the elliptically shaped front and main building.

Grotto Hall

On the ground floor there was a “Sala Terrena” designed as a grotto hall, which was located under the ballroom. This was also elliptical in plan and was on the ground floor of the rampart. Eight free-standing columns supported the vaulted ceiling of the grotto hall on the ground floor, which offered a cool place to stay on hot summer days. The columns were designed like palm trees "with scaly trunks and fronds as capitals ". " Stalactite cladding on the walls, as well as a fountain on the inside of the room, made of rocks and shells, with water gods cavorting between them, created a cool, refreshing atmosphere".

literature

Web links

Commons : Second Belvedere  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Löffler: The old Dresden - history of its buildings . Seemann, Leipzig 1981, p. 243.
  2. ↑ a b c d Manfred Zumpe: The Brühl terrace in Dresden . Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin 1991, p. 110
  3. ^ Fritz Löffler: The old Dresden - history of its buildings . Seemann, Leipzig 1981, p. 256, image no. 312.

Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 10.4 ″  N , 13 ° 44 ′ 42.4 ″  E