Vienna Hofburg - Imperial Apartments, Sisi Museum, Silver Collection

Vienna Hofburg - Imperial Apartments, Sisi Museum, Silver Collection

By Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.Society & CultureEducationArtsHistory
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Vienna Hofburg - Imperial Apartments, Sisi Museum, Silver Collection episodes

  • 11 - The Milan Centrepiece
    The monumental Milan centrepiece was commissioned for the coronation of Emperor Ferdinand as king of Lombardy-Venetia in 1838. It is the most elaborate ensemble in the Imperial Silver Collection and together with its mirror plateaus it can be extended to a length of 30 metres. On the central piece you can see the allegorical figures of Lombardia with her mural crown and a horn of plenty together with Venetia with the doge’s cap and the lion of St Mark, while around the rim of the plateau dancing genii alternate with candelabra. Standing before this impressive centrepiece one can vividly imagine the magnificence of imperial banquets, with the tables decorated with luxuriant bouquets of flowers as well as arrangements of fruit and sweetmeats. The Classicistic figures on the centrepiece derive from the tradition of Baroque table decorations which, depending on the occasion for the meal, drew on elements of the classical pantheon, or the arts of war or love.
    2 min
  • 12 - The Foot-washing Ceremony
    There was a centuries-old tradition at the Viennese court according to which the emperor and empress washed the feet of 12 men and 12 women each year on Holy Thursday, in remembrance of the act of humility performed by Christ in washing the feet of his disciples. The ceremony was performed on elderly paupers, who presented themselves at court on Holy Thursday, washed and dressed in clean clothes and having undergone a careful medical examination. After the foot-washing ceremony they were served a meal consisting of traditional Lenten fare and then presented with the gifts of a lidded earthenware jug filled with white wine, a silver beaker marked with the double eagle and the year, dishes of food and a pouch containing 30 silver coins, a reference to the thirty pieces of silver received by Judas for betraying Christ. The two gold lavabo garnitures or sets were made by the foremost Augsburg silversmiths of the 18th century. They were used at Habsburg baptisms, for ceremonial ablutions at table and for the footwashing ceremony at Easter.
    2 min
  • 13 - The Habsburg Service
    This desert service, formerly known as the Laxenburg Service, was commissioned from the Viennese Porcelain Manufactory in 1824 to mark the marriage of Archduke Franz Carl to Princess Sophie of Bavaria, the parents of the future Emperor Franz Joseph. At the end of the 18th century, Emperor Franz I, the bridegroom’s father, had had the Franzensburg built at Laxenburg, a Habsburg summer residence near Vienna. It was designed as a monument to the Habsburg dynasty, and its life-size statues, paintings, coats of arms and stained glass windows were intended to glorify the family’s history. The dynastic idea even manifested itself in the dinner service, as you can see here. Besides the arms and portraits of earlier Habsburg rulers and their consorts, 60 plates known as “Ruin Plates” display views of fortresses and castles belonging to the Habsburg dynasty. It is no coincidence that the neo-Gothic forms of the centrepiece are reminiscent of reliquary shrines, chalices and other ecclesiastical utensils. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Emperor Franz was at pains to compensate for the loss of the sacred office of the German imperial title and to legitimise the divinely sanctioned nature and continuity of the Habsburg dynasty in the newly-created hereditary Austrian empire. Thus, even the dinner services with portraits of their ancestors were imbued with an almost liturgical character, as it were staking a claim on eternity.
    2 min
  • 14 - Dinner Service for Archduke Ferdinand Max
    This service came to Vienna from Castle Miramare near Trieste, the former residence of Archduke Ferdinand Max, later to become Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. The archduke was the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph. In 1854 he became commander-in-chief of the imperial and royal navy. In 1864 he accepted the emperorship of Mexico, but failed to establish himself in his new empire. He was taken prisoner by the leader of the republican forces, Benito Juarez, who had him shot by firing squad in 1867. You will hear more about this episode in the Imperial Apartments. The dinner service is a product of the Herend porcelain manufactory in Hungary, which initially specialised in copies of Chinese models. Emperor Maximilian ordered this service for his residence in Chapultepek in 1865. Moritz Fischer, the owner of the manufactory, was permitted to display the service in 1867 at the Paris World Exhibition as an advertisement for Herend’s wares. By the time the exhibition had ended Maximilian was dead, and the service was never sent to Mexico.
    2 min
  • 15 - The Thun White and Gold Service
    This white and gold dinner service was acquired for Emperor Ferdinand in 1851. Ferdinand, nicknamed “the Good-Natured” by the people, abdicated from the throne during the course of the bourgeois revolution of 1848 in favour of his young nephew, Franz Joseph. Ferdinand subsequently moved to the fortress at Prague, where he lived in quiet retirement until his death in 1875. The white and gold dinner service was ordered for his new household in Prague from the porcelain manufactory of the Counts of Thun at Klösterle in Bohemia.
    The design of the service was the very height of fashion at that time. Tastes had changed around the middle of the century, with the emphatically clear lines of the Biedermeier era giving way to a softer, more flowing formal idiom. The rich gold decoration expresses the growing need to demonstrate feudal magnificence, a tendency that also made itself felt at the imperial Viennese court.
    2 min
  • 16 - The New French Centrepiece
    One of the first new acquisitions made for the young Emperor Franz Joseph after his accession during the revolution of 1848 was the “New French Centrepiece”, commissioned in Paris in 1850/51. This decorative bronze-gilt piece surpasses the other centrepieces by far in the opulence of its decoration. The huge candelabra have a richly decorated superstructure composed of scrolls and rocaille work and are animated by playful putti, leaping game animals and fluttering birds. The need for a centrepiece of this size had arisen because the young emperor used to issue regular invitations to his advisors and ministers to dine at court. Under the influence of Archduchess Sophie, neo-Baroque and neo-Rococo elements became popular at court, a circumstance that was particularly reflected in the way the apartments were furnished but also had an influence on the design of utensils for the dining table.
    2 min
  • 17 - Dinner and dessert service with green ribbons (Svres)
    The service with the green ribbons was a precious gift from the French king, Louis XV, to Empress Maria Theresa. It was intended as a sign of increasing rapprochement between France and Austria after the bloody wars of succession. Green intertwining ribbons represent the main decorative element, while the forms of the individual items are modelled on Baroque goldsmith’s work. Between the ribbons are delicate Rococo scenes after paintings by François Boucher. They represent allegories of love, poetry, music, painting and sculpture or contain references to world literature from Homer to Molière. The service is a magnificent example of the elegant wares produced by the royal French porcelain manufactory at Sèvres, founded in 1738. They are made of a special porcelain known as “frit”, which, while more fragile, allows the colours to develop a particularly intense radiance due to the lower firing temperature. The brilliant green of this service had only been developed a short time previously. It was used just this once with the double ribbon motif to make this gift for Maria Theresa.
    2 min
  • Gold Sheaves of Corn Tureens
    In 1777 Emperor Joseph II visited his sister, the French queen Marie Antoinette, at Versailles. On his return he brought with him a total of 500 costly porcelain objects from Sèvres, including the apple-green dinner service and four magnificent tureens, three of which have been preserved in the Imperial Silver Collection. The round Olio tureen – used for a nourishing soup – and the two soup tureens have four curving legs and rest on stands. The sculptural gilded decoration representing sheaves of corn together with the fruit, agricultural produce, flowers, eggs, sea creatures as well as gardening and agricultural tools painted in the medallions, symbolise fertility and the fruitful cultivation of Nature.s
    1 min
  • 19 - Folded napkin (swan), table linen
    The folding of table napkins into imaginative shapes is an old but unfortunately dying art. These complex creations imitating the shapes of fans, fish, shells, swans, ducks or flowers were used as table decorations above all in the early Baroque era. They can only be achieved with napkins of the finest linen and a certain size. The imperial table napkin measuring one square metre is eminently suited for this, and there still exists a wealth of models from the 17th century for these artistic creations.
    1 min
  • 20 - Gold Service
    The Gold Service was the most magnificent porcelain service of the Viennese court. Each individual piece of this dinner service with settings for twelve people is covered with polished gold; some of them are even gilded inside and underneath. The delicate matt gold ornaments are styled on the decorative friezes of Antiquity. Made in 1814, the Gold Service is a masterpiece of the Viennese Porcelain Manufactory. It was urgently needed, as the gold service appropriate to an imperial court had been melted down for coin during the wars against Napoleon. When Emperor Franz visited Paris in 1814 and it emerged that Vienna was to host a large congress of all the European powers, this service was duly ordered from the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory. Thus the court had – at least as far as appearances were concerned – a substitute service for the use at state banquets.
    1 min

About Vienna Hofburg - Imperial Apartments, Sisi Museum, Silver Collection

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Until 1918 the extensive palatial complex at the heart of Vienna was the political centre of the monarchy. Today it fulfills the same role for the democratic Republic of Austria. The rooms where the…