Visitors to the important exhibition, Andreas Schlüter and Baroque Berlin, in the Bode Museum, Berlin, until 13 July 2014, may well be slightly disconcerted in encountering eight large-scale stone sculptures by the master before they reach the exhibition proper, and none in it. All becomes clear when it is recognised that the large stone figures rescued from the Berliner Schloss and Villa Kameke form part of the permanent displays of the Bode Museum and the information panels devoted to Frederick III/I (1657-1713), Elector of Brandenburg and from 1750 King in Prussia, and Andreas Schlüter (1659/60-1714) on the ground floor serve to whet the appetite for the exhibition in the handsome suite of day-lit galleries on the first floor. The exhibition has been mounted at a politically opportune moment; the 300th anniversary of the death of Andreas Schlüter (23 June 1714) coincides with the contemporary political need to inform and justify the enormous cost of the partial reconstruction of the Berlin Schloss, commenced in summer 2013.

The sculptor and architect Andreas Schlüter occupies the central role, but the exhibition proper in the Bode Museum is relatively lacking in autograph works by Schlüter himself and the exhibition is effectively conceived as one of multiple venues. Visitors are consequently directed also to the surviving works by Schlüter within Berlin and these are accorded full coverage in the massive scholarly catalogue (over 3kg) published by Hirmer. Consequently, any reviewer has to encompass these different aspects, the core exhibition itself being an exercise in the art of the possible given the nature of his oeuvre and the extent of World War II destruction.

For non-specialists, Schlüter is best known for his equestrian monument to the Great Elector of Brandenburg which today stands in the entrance courtyard of Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin. Frederick William (1620-88), Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, had been a successful military leader who undertook many improvements to his lands in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. These were greatly aided by the arrival of considerable numbers of Huguenots following Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), which the Great Elector had countered with the Edict of Potsdam later in the same year. He was succeeded on his death by his son, Frederick, born in 1657 in Königsberg, East Prussia (the present day Kaliningrad). As the Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia – the latter a territory outside the confines of the Holy Roman Empire – his ambitions led to his decision to adopt the title of ‘King in Prussia’, and he crowned himself in Königsberg in 1701. From this point on he is referred to as Frederick I.

Inheriting a well-managed state, he set about transforming Cölln-Berlin into a royal capital to rival Rome and the Paris of Louis XIV. At first the building works were masterminded by the cautious Johann Arnold Nering (1659-95), Superintendent of the Royal Works, and a start was made on the construction of the Arsenal (Zeughaus) shortly before his premature death in 1695. Frederick’s tastes were for a more full-bodied Baroque and in 1694 he had enticed Andreas Schlüter away from the Polish court and appointed him court sculptor. The son of a sculptor, Andreas Schlüter had been born in Danzig in 1659/60 and made his reputation as court sculptor of Jan III Sobieski, King of Poland, in Warsaw. His work there is to be seen at Wilanów and in the decoration of the east pediment of the Krasiński Palace designed by Tilman van Gameren (1689-94). Regina Deckers has contributed a valuable introductory chapter to the catalogue on Schlüter’s activity in Danzig and Poland.

The exhibition opens on the first floor with rooms devoted to the artistic activity in Berlin more broadly under the Great Elector, and the focal point is the famous painting of The Apotheosis of the Great Elector as Protector of the Arts (1682) by Michael Leopold Willmann (1630-1706). Frederick William’s first wife was Louise Henriette of Nassau, the daughter of Frederick Henry of Orange-Nassau, and the Dutch influence is apparent in both their marble busts (1651/52) by François Dieussart (c. 1600-61) and his full-length marble figure of the Great Elector in armour holding a field-marshal’s baton of the same date. Flemish influences can be seen in the sadly damaged Cupid stringing his Bow, by Francois Duquesnoy (1579-1643) once owned by the Stadtholder of The Netherlands, and the lively terracotta group of Samson and Delilah (c. 1640) by Artus Quellinus the Elder (1609-88). Also included in this section are sculptures by Leonhard Kern (1588-1662) and Gottfried Christian Leygebe (1630-83) which set the scene for Schlüter’s arrival in Berlin. Painted views and early maps emphasise its provincial character before c. 1770. Frederick I’s plans included the founding of the Academy of Arts and Mechanical Sciences, to which Schlüter was elected in 1696. This august body is represented by the splendid pen and ink drawing of an allegory of its foundation, signed and dated 1696 by Matthäus Terwesten (1670-1757), and in turn ridiculed by an entertaining spoof (1896) by Adolf Menzel (1815-1905) poking fun at the bicentenary. Among Schlüter’s first commissions was the full-length, life-size bronze statue of Frederick I intended for the Arsenal courtyard, but never set up there. The sculpture was cast in 1698 but, its iconography out of date by 1701, it was installed in the Königsberg Schloss in 1802, only to be lost in World War II. However, a plaster cast had been made in the nineteenth century and a fresh bronze cast made from it in 1972. This normally stands in the entrance courtyard of Schloss Charlottenburg, but it is a great pity that the opportunity was not exploited to re-patinate the modern cast for this exhibition as its present appearance is deplorable. 

The principle task assigned to Schlüter on his arrival was the execution of the sculptural decoration of the Arsenal with parade helmets and Medusa heads on the exterior keystones and masks of dying captives on the keystones round the courtyard. Superbly carved from Schlüter’s models by a team under the direction of Georg Gottfried Weyhenmeyer (c. 1696-1718), they are among Schlüter’s masterpieces. Drawings by Theodor Lubieniecki (1654-1718/20) executed c. 1696-1700 convey brilliantly the quality of those models, and also on display are the delicate etchings by Christian Bernhadt Rode (1725-97) dating from 1760/63 when plaster casts of the models were in his possession.

Great emphasis is placed upon the master bronze founder, Johann Jacobi (1661-1726) who was enticed from Paris by Frederick I to cast the equestrian monument of the Great Elector (1696-1709) for the Lange Brücke in Berlin. He had been the caster of the huge equestrian monument to Louis XIV by Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720) for Paris, and was famous as a gun founder. The monument to the Great Elector is represented in the exhibition by the reduction cast by Jacobi in 1713 for the Berlin Künstkammer, and the genesis of this key work is explored in detail. Frederick I replaced the old wooden structure of the Lange Brücke erected by the Great Elector and which provided the principle access route across the River Spree between Berlin and Cölln, where the Schloss was located. From the outset the design included provision for the equestrian monument, which was clearly intended to emulate the equestrian monument to Henri IV on the Pont Neuf in Paris, begun by Giambologna (1529-1608) in 1604, completed in 1614 by Pietro Tacca (1577-1640), with four captives around its pedestal by Pietro Francavilla (1548-1615), and later destroyed in the French Revolution. 

The order of displays within the exhibition is dictated by the sequence of different-sized display spaces available and, given the concurrence of many projects, a slightly different order has been adopted for the catalogue and its essays. One darkened space is dedicated to a theatrical display of Schlüter’s over life-size bronze Portrait Bust of Landgraf Frederick II of Hesse-Homburg (1633-1708), dating from 1701, which is exhibited with Jean-Louis Lemoyne’s marble Bust of Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1699-1704) and that of Landgraf Karl I of Hessen-Kassel, by Gabriel Grupello (1697/98) in bronze. A detailed analysis of this group is provided by Philipp Zitzlsberger in the catalogue, but the visitor is left wondering – on visual grounds – about the relevance of Lemoyne and Grupello. The next gallery is devoted to Schlüter’s work on the Old Post Office in Berlin, which he designed and built in 1701-04. Eight sandstone tondi representing seated female allegorical figures were carved by Schlüter and six were taken down when the building was demolished in 1889. Preserved in the Skulpturensammlung, these reveal the liquid modelling of draperies which is so pronounced in the mature sculpture of Schlüter.

Much of the remainder of the displays is focussed on Schlüter’s work on the Berlin Schloss and the Münzturm (Mint Tower), and the debacle over the latter, which was to lead to his dismissal. The enlargement of the Berlin Schloss for Frederick I in a manner appropriate to his new royal rank was his major preoccupation and he allocated responsibility for the massive project to Schlüter in 1698, appointing him Surveyor General of the palace the following year. The central exhibition space is dominated by an immaculate architectural model of the Berlin Schloss, 1:100 scale, which represents its final state before the Second World War. Around this are displayed Schlüter’s designs, a reconstruction of part of the great staircase, and fragments rescued before the bomb-damaged palace was demolished by the East German authorities in 1950. The Bode Museum preserves greatly distressed over life-size sandstone figures from the great staircase, but the piéce de résistance is provided by The Great Silver Buffet of silver gilt produced in Augsburg 1695-98 and installed in the Knight’s Hall of the Schloss between 1703 and 1706. This is the last great Baroque buffet to survive intact.

The last rooms are devoted to Schlüter’s major commissions which are still in situ outside the Bode Museum. In the Dom (nineteenth-century Protestant cathedral) are located the spectacularly sculptural gilt bronze sarcophagi of Frederick I’s wife Sophie Charlotte, sister of George I of England, who died in 1705, and that of Frederick I himself, who died in 1713. They are developed from the tomb of the Great Elector designed by Nering (1688, also in the Dom), and in turn lead on to those of the Emperors in Vienna. The detail, notwithstanding the lavish decoration, is relatively coarse, especially in contrast to the beautiful alabaster carving of Schlüter’s elaborate pulpit in the Marienkirche (Church of the Virgin Mary, 1703), whose debt to Bernini here is apparent. The liquid treatment of the draperies depicted in the reliefs parallels the reliefs formerly decorating the Old Post Office. In the exhibition are two large silver gilt tankards studded with coins, executed by the goldsmith Daniel Männlich the Elder (1625-1701), who commissioned Schlüter to provide his funeral monument (1700) in the church of St Nicholas, an ingenious composition which envelops the doorway, giving access to the crypt. Like the Arsenal sculpture, the royal sarcophagi, and the pulpit, full catalogue entries are provided.

After his dismissal in 1706 as Surveyor General of the palace, Schlüter worked for Ernst Boguslav von Kameke constructing the Villa Kameke and carving the figures crowning the central pavilion at roof level. The Villa itself was totally destroyed in the bombing of Berlin during World War II but the figures (1711/12) had been removed, and, although damaged, four are displayed on the ground floor of the Bode Museum along the approach to the exhibition. They represent Apollo and Daphne with Neptune and Amphitrite and reveal the delightful lyrical quality in his late work. 

The catalogue, though not mirroring the exhibition structure, concludes with Regina Deckers’ account of Schlüter’s brief activity in St Petersburg (1714), where he died within only a few months of arrival. At the end of the exhibition a video loop provides a short tour of Schlüter’s work in both Poland and Berlin, including the bombed-out Schloss and the dynamiting of its shell in 1950. The message is stark and this act of cultural vandalism is shown for all to see. 

However, the reassessment of Schlüter and his place as a major sculptor and architect of the Baroque in Northern Europe has been strengthened by this exhibition and it demonstrates his valuable artistic service to the Hohenzollerns in consolidating the new-found status of the state of Brandenburg-Prussia at the beginning of the eighteenth century.