Golo Maurer, director of the library of the Bibliotheca Hertziana Max Planck Institute Rome, in conversation with editors Hannelore Putz, Martin Baumeister, and Ferdinand Kramer

With the publication of the third volume last autumn, the historical-critical edition of the correspondence between Ludwig I of Bavaria and his Roman art agent, the sculptor Johann Martin von Wagner, is now complete. The comprehensively annotated correspondence, comprising 1,352 letters in nine volumes, covers the period from 1809 to Wagner’s death in 1858. It is a reference work for the art market of the time, for provenance research and for the reception of antiquity. It presents Rome as a European cultural metropolis from the perspective of the Bavarian ‘art monarchy’ in the age of revolutions. It offers a wealth of insights into the motives and dynamics of monarchical cultural policy, the history of collecting and museums, but also the situation of artists in the ‘eternal city’. At the same time, it reflects a peculiar four-decade-long relationship between the crown prince, who became King of Bavaria in 1825, and ‘his’ man in Rome.

Event in German language

In collaboration with the German Historical Institute in Rome

Foto: Johann Martin von Wagner (1777–1858), Bronzebüste von Herrmann Ernst Freund, 1826 (Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek München)