From the Renaissance onward artists from many European countries were drawn to Italy to study classical and contemporary art on the spot. France was the first country to offer its artists a contact point and training facilities in the south, the Académie de France founded in Rome in 1666. Although the hope for a German academy had been expressed repeatedly from the 18th century onwards, it was not until the following century that serious attempts were made to accomplish this ambition. Between 1872 and 1875 the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand, the painter Hans von Marée and the patron Conrad Fiedler rented a former monastery near Florence to establish a community based around artists sharing a studio. This community broke up when Marée moved away, but other artists’ groups were established using the same model, for example one was based around the writer Isolde Kurz and the painter Arnold Böcklin. From 1887 to 1889 Karl Stauffer-Bern and his two Zurich-based patrons Lydia Welti-Escher and her husband Emil Welti planned to move to Florence to establish a Künstlerhaus (artists’ centre). This project was soon overshadowed by the affair between the artist and his patroness and came to an abrupt end when the couple tragically committed suicide in 1891. A further project was taken on in 1895 - 96 by the painter Ernst Moritz Geyger, but similarly came to an unhappy end. Finally Max Klinger and his friend, the publisher Georg Hirzel managed to win the support of the board of the Deutscher Künstlerbund (German Artists’ Federation) that had been founded in Weimar in 1903 in opposition to Wilhelminian artistic policy. Two years later Klinger acquired Villa Romana, on the southern outskirts of Florence on the main road to Rome and started with the installation of four artist’s flats containing studios. In November 1905 the first holder of a scholarship, the Leipzig painter Kurt Tuch, arrived in Florence. He had been selected – as were subsequent generations of winners of Villa Romana awards – by a jury that (until 1972) comprised only members of the Deutscher Künstlerbund. It promoted artists in all “artistically valid styles”. The prize covered a stay of several months in Florence in addition to a small subsistence allowance and was granted on the condition “that works inspired in or by the Villa should first be exhibited at Federation exhibitions”. The list of prize winners contains many famous names, for example Georg Kolbe, Max Beckmann, Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Barlach, Gerhard Marcks, Horst Antes, Georg Baselitz, Markus Lüpertz, Dorothee von Windheim, Anna Oppermann and many others. Thanks to staunch support and funding Villa Romana remains a constant feature of cultural policy and promotion of the arts in Germany.
Further reading on the history of Villa Romana:
- Mir tanzt Florenz auch im Kopfe rum. Die Villa Romana in den Briefen von Max Klinger an den Verleger Georg Hirzel (Florence dances in my head too. Villa Romana in the letters of Max Klinger to the publisher Georg Hirzel) edited with an introduction by Angela Windholz, Munich et al 2005
- Ein Arkadien der Moderne? 100 Jahre Künstlerhaus Villa Romana in Florenz (An Arcadia of the Modern Age? 100 years of the Künstlerhaus Villa Romana in Florence) published by Thomas Föhl and Gerda Wendermann (Exhibition Neues Museum Weimar, 8 October 2005 – 15 January 2006), Berlin 2005
Florence congratulates the Villa Romana
After the 100th anniversary of the Villa Romana had been duly marked in Germany, Switzerland and many other countries in numerous newspaper articles, meetings and exhibitions, at the end of November Florence itself joined the ranks of well-wishers. On the initiative of the Swiss consulate and in cooperation with the Kunsthistorisches Institut In Florenz (KHI), the Gabinetto G. P. Vieusseux – Centro Romantico and the University of Florence several events were in fact held over three consecutive days.
The celebrations were launched on 23rd November with the opening of the exhibition “Villa Romana – Porta Romana” in the Swiss consulate. It featured black and white photographs of the villa and its surroundings from the early days of the Künstlerhaus. In addition, the Zurich-based journalist and author Willi Wottreng presented his latest book “Die Millionärin und der Maler. Die Tragödie Lydia Welti-Escher and Karl Stauffer-Bern” (The Millionaire and the Painter. The Tragedy of Lydia Welti-Escher and Karl Stauffer-Bern). The author uses primary sources to tell the story of the love affair between the heiress Lydia Welti-Escher and the painter and sculptor Karl Stauffer-Bern, that played out in the mid-1880s in Switzerland and Italy and which ended in tragedy. Subsequently the outgoing Villa Romana director Joachim Burmeister presented the author with a gift of the diary of Stauffer-Bern and a bundle of copied documents about Lydia Welti-Escher, the originals of which are in the Florence State Archive.
The second part of the festivities took place within the KHI. Gerhard Wolf presented Joachim Burmeister with a copy of the recently published edition of Max Klinger’s 544 letters from the Villa Romana archive: “Mir tanzt Florenz auch im Kopfe rum. Die Villa Romana in den Briefen von Max Klinger an den Verleger Georg Hirzel“. Angela Windholz, currently a post-doctoral scholar at the KHI, had edited the book and written the introduction. The book was printed thanks to the generous support of 5.000 EUR of the Friends of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. The formal part of the evening was brought to a close with a concert featuring the mezzo-soprano Claudia Hasslinger - accompanied by Gregorio Nardi at the grand piano - who sang airs by Johann Brahms, Hugo Wolf and Max Reger. Afterwards the guests repaired to the Casa Zuccari for a celebratory drink.
On the following day the closing event was a meeting in the Palazzo Strozzi organised by the Gabinetto G. P. Vieusseux - Centro Romantico and the University of Florence. In the first section that was chaired by Maurizio Bossi, Philipp Kuhn lectured on Max Klinger and his Villa Romana, subsequently Claudia Vitale gave a talk about the women who lived and worked in the Villa Romana. At a session chaired by Maria Fancelli, Gerd Blum gave a talk on the two years that the artists Adolf von Hildebrand and Hans von Marée had spent in Florence. Giovanni Faccenda closed proceedings with a lecture on the paintings of Arnold Böcklin and Giorgio De Chirico.
Publication of the Klinger letters
The attractively printed and stylish book “Mir tanzt Florenz auch im Kopfe rum” has 495 pages and is divided into four sections. Gerhard Wolf’s preface is followed by an introduction of just under 60 pages by art historian Angela Windholz. In it she sketches the protagonists of the letters and the intricate environment within the cultural history world from 1901 to 1920. This is followed by copies of the letters and postcards written by Max Klinger in chronological order. The addresses and details of the postmarks are given where available. The edition is completed by a detailed index of people and places as well as a list of all the works of the painter, graphic artist and sculptor referred to in the letters.
Max Klinger’s letters are significant in many ways. They can be read not only as a kind of diary of this outstanding German fin-de-siècle artist but also as an interesting contemporary chronicle. Moreover, this correspondence provides the only surviving documents from the foundation period of the Künstlerhaus, after the Villa Romana archive in Berlin was destroyed by fire in World War II.
Mir tanzt Florenz auch im Kopfe rum. Die Villa Romana in den Briefen von Max Klinger an den Verleger Georg Hirzel edited with an introduction by Angela Windholz, Munich et al 2005.
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