Huh. So I assumed that when Fritz and FW forbade it, it was part of their joint refusal to participate in royal rituals. Unlike Fritz, FW wanted an actual funeral, but embalming was expensive, and I assumed that was part of why he didn't want that. (He may also have had religious reasons, I'm not sure about his particular beliefs.)
Fritz, as we all know (contra Manger and Kletschke), wanted a simple funeral because he believed death was the end, and he wanted to be buried like a philosopher, not a king. I always assumed "no embalming" was part of that.
But SD. Huh. I would have assumed she would have gone full-blown royal treatment! Maybe it was modesty/squeamishness.
I came across the SD thing when looking up her funeral because reasons these last few months. Since she also died in the summer, her not wanting any embalming (or autopsy) was one big reason why Amalie didn't have the time to wait for Fritz' instructions regarding the manner of the funeral and organized it post haste herself. (It's all in Lehndorff's diaries; he was one of the coffin carriers, and she was rather heavy.)
wanted to be buried like a philosopher, not a king. I always assumed "no embalming" was part of that.
Yeah, I think that's certainly a big part of it in Fritz' case, even including the "return to nature" aspect, see the introductory context in his will:
Gladly and without regret, I return my breath of life to the beneficial nature that graciously lent it to me, and my body to the elements of which it is made. I lived as a philosopher and want to be buried as such, without pageantry and ceremonial pomp. I don't want to be dissected or embalmed. [Followed by the vault details and the "like Moritz von Nassau, who was buried in a bosk" reference, i.e. more nature.]
That said, and Zimmermann aside, no autopsy (as opposed to no "kingly" embalming) might still have been an expression of his control issues, i.e. not wanting anybody to mess with his body after his death? Not sure how much his pragmatic belief that death was the end would have affected that, or what the general view of autopsies was around the time. But in addition to mentioning it in both versions of his will (see below), he also makes sure to include it in two "in case I get killed" instructions in 1757 (pre-Leuthen) and 1758 (pre-Zorndorf), solely, without mentioning embalming as well. So it must have been rather important to him. (The German version from 1758: Man soll mir nicht öffnen, sondern stille nach Sanssouci bringen und in meinem Garten begraben lassen.) By the way, the first of his wartime "in case I die" instructions from 1741 actually says he wants to be cremated (in the Roman style) and buried in an urn grave at Rheinsberg. Interesting to see the changes over time.
Speaking of! I just realized that there were two versions of his will, 1752 and 1769, and that the second is slightly different and condensed when it comes to the burial instructions, i.e. he left out the whole dramatic "third day at midnight, by latern light, nobody following" part in the second one. (The middle step being a simple "at night" in 1757.) I'm curious if he had a template/reference for that earlier scenario, do we know?
Also, Preuss says that the 1769 testament was opened and read by the Minister of State v. Hertzberg, on August 18, 1786, at the castle of Berlin, in the presence of the new king, of the princes Heinrich and Ferdinand, and of the Minister of State Count Finck of Finckenstein, which made me wonder if we have any comments from Heinrich (or Ferdinand) about FWII disregarding Fritz' wishes?
Not that Ziebura quoted them in her biography. Mind you, I always suspected that Heinrich micromanaging his own funeral in advance was partly because of that. As to how Heinrich and Ferdinand felt about FW2 disregarding Fritz' wishes re: the manner of his burial: mixed, probably. Between AW's fate and FW2's youth,they might have seen it as an avenging gesture FW2 was entitled to, or they could have seen it as disrespect towards the older generation not boding well for their own futures. (Well, Heinrich's future at any rate, since Ferdinand didn't have any hopes of getting back into politics and the military now, which Heinrich in 1786 most certainly did, only for FW2 to refuse to let him rejoin the army - which he'd left in the Bavarian war - and thereby set the tone for the rest of his life.)
I'm sure Heinrich would have said something on this matter to his personal circle of friends, but alas, Lehndorff's diaries from that time are lost. Anyway, I just checked with Ziebura again who gives Heinrich's precise orders for how his dead body and funeral are to be handled, and while he doesn't mention either prohibiting or allowing autopsy or embalming, the rest is very Fritz like, as befits l'autre moi-meme, especially point 5 (wants to be dressed in his oldest uniform, and if his legs are swollen, the boots can be cut upon, he doesn't want to be a disgusting spectacle for the world), 10) (no torches around his body when it's laid out, just a single guard to make sure he's really dead for a night and to keep the cats and dogs from having a go at it, no flowers and other decorations on his coffin), and 9) Count Roedern is supposed to remind the King (FW3) that the Comte de la Roche-Raymon is in charge of the funeral and that Heinrich wants to be buried at Rheinsberg in the vault he built for himself, with the epitaph he wrote.
BTW, cats and dogs: I never realised this before, but that means Heinrich must have kept some at Rheinsberg, or people from his household did.
BTW, cats and dogs: I never realised this before, but that means Heinrich must have kept some at Rheinsberg, or people from his household did.
Evidently! I think I had raised an eyebrow at that when reading Ziebura, but then totally forgotten (has it really been almost a year? OMG), so thank you for the reminder! Since we don't hear about them from Lehndorff, I'm guessing they weren't nearly as important to Heinrich as the greyhounds were to Fritz.
Which is why I qualified it with "...or people from his household". Perhaps owning dogs himself would have been too much of a resemblance for Heinrich, but he was okay with either of the Roche-Raymons or someone else from his circle and household owning them. Now that I think of it: Fontane mentions that the Countess de la Roche-Raymon as an excentric old lady was a major major cat lady (with some other animals in her apartment, too, when he visited), who in fact died by bite of cat. Presumably she already liked cats as a young woman, and she and her husband were living with Heinrich part of the year, so the cats at least probably were hers.
Speaking of Heinrich and wills - something I found interesting during my reading of Fritz' wills were the individual legacies, particularly the ones for Heinrich, because they reflect Fritz' attitude towards him. It's very obvious that he was on Fritz' shit list in 1752 (because they were arguing about Heinrich's planned marriage I guess, also possibly money?), and while everybody who was still alive got an upgrade in the second will, Heinrich once again stands out, but in the other direction this time:
1752:
13. I will bequeath four hand horses from my stable and accessories to my brother Heinrich.
for comparison, Ferdinand:
16. To my brother Ferdinand, who has always shown me friendship, 20,000 thalers, 100 buckets of Hungarian wine, six hand horses with their saddlecloths, a team of Prussian horses and the second set of my silver service in Potsdam.
Whereas in 1769, it's this:
9. To my brother Heinrich 200,000 thalers, 50 buckets of Hungarian wine, a beautiful rock crystal chandelier from Potsdam, the green diamond that I wear on my finger, two hand horses with accessories and a team of six Prussian horses.
13. To my dear brother Ferdinand, 50,000 thalers, 50 buckets of Hungarian wine, a gala carriage with a team of horses and all accessories.
Right? OMG, Fritz! was certainly my reaction when I read the 1752 one. Not least because of the "who has always shown me friendship" note added to Ferdinand's part. He formally deposited it in the archives and asked for it back to use as a template when he set out to write the updated one in 1769, so I'm kind of wondering if the 200,000 thaler were a result of him rereading what he did in 1752...
One more detail from the 1769 version of the will:
11. I am bequeathing to my sister, the Queen of Sweden, one of my golden boxes valued at 10,000 thalers, 20 buckets of Hungarian wine and a painting of Pesne in the Sanssouci Palace, which I received from Algarotti.
Of course I got curious, so I looked it up and it's apparently this one (in colour), with the inscription Unter dem Kissen [Under the Pillow]— Ant. Pesne fecit 1706.
Oesterreicher says "A charming peasant girl in the window with her head resting on her right arm. Light and shadow have a splendid effect in this painting, the painter represented bare [bloße] nature. [He sure did.] * * The Count Algarotti bequeathed this painting to His Majesty the King.
Fritz also mentions that Algarotti offered him a Pesne painting in his last letter to Algarotti, which I assume was this one, so they had talked about it before and I'm not entirely sure if it was a formal last will thing from Algarotti or just coincided with his death.
Nevertheless, I have questions! Did Algarotti think that Fritz would simply like to have a Pesne painting or was the motif relevant innuendo? The inscription? And why on earth did Fritz bequeath it to Ulrike - did she come across it during a visit and she and Fritz talked about it? Inside joke? Does she have a connection to Algarotti at all or is it just the fact that Pesne painted it? It's not like Fritz didn't have hundreds of other paintings to give, so why this one?
Fascinating detail! Also, that's actually a beautiful painting, and strikingly different from official portraits Pesne did of the royal family. This is a painting I really like.
did she come across it during a visit?
Not unless Algarotti gave it to Fritz before 1744, when Ulrike got married and moved to Sweden. At this point, Sanssouci didn't exist yet, but Fritz could of course have hung the picture elsewhere. The 1771 visit to Brandenburg was Ulrike's first after her marriage, so she can't have seen the painting in Sanssouci at the point when Fritz is making this will. If she knows it, she must have seen it before 1744 in Potsdam and Berlin. Now, since Pesne lived in Brandenburg since F1 hired him as court painter - and was among the people FW didn't fire (he just cut the salary Pesne was receiving by half) -, this wouldn't be that difficult. Ulrike was portrayed by Pesne as were her siblings, after all. (There is a portrait of her hanging in Rheinsberg today.) Maybe, just maybe, instead of Pesne coming to her rooms, she was allowed to visit his studio and pose there, which means she could have seen the painting there?
Alas, though, dates argue against it. Pesne was appointed court painter by F1 in 1711; this painting hails from 1706. At which point young Pesne was living in....Venice. Where Algarotti is from. Which would explain why Algarotti owns a painting of the Prussian court painter to give to Fritz that the royal family doesn't own already. (Meaning young Pesne probably sold the painting back then to some Venetian noble and Algarotti, who could have seen it in Palazzo X, aquired it there.
As to why this painting of a peasant girl with cleavage, well, as my Aged Parent noted, there is no lack of female half nudes or nudes at Sanssouci anyway, enough to make him question Fritz' sexuality again. And it is a beautiful painting. I think it's probably no more complicated than Algarotti knowing Fritz would like such a good Pesne.
As to why Fritz should think Ulrike would like it, well, see above. The only way she could have known it was if she'd seen it before 1744, which could be the case if Pesne didn't sell it while in Venice but kept it and brought it with him to Berlin. Which is also possible, though in that case I question why Algarotti owned it before Fritz did.
Ohh, nice, thank you for the chronology! I assume that Fritz got the painting in 1764, when he mentions it in his letter / Algarotti died, but I didn't make the connection that Ulrike couldn't have seen in between then and 1769! Huh.
So
a) she didn't know it at all - which still begs the question why that one, because Fritz must have owned lots of other Pesne paintings if he wanted to give her one for what I'd assume is nostalgia's sake, and also, nobody else got a painting in the second will (Wilhelmine got two in the first one, a Rubens and a Van Dyck). I might have said that he was simply looking at it while writing the will, but he wrote in January again, so definitely not.
or
b) Pesne did have it with him in Berlin and she (they) knew it from back then. By the way, thanks for pointing out the Venice connection, I'd have missed that. Like you, I'm leaning towards Pesne not having it with him in Berlin, because of the date of the painting and the Algarotti connection.
Speaking of, this is what Fritz writes in June 1764: I am very much obliged to you for the part which you take in what concerns me, and for the painting by Pesne which you offer me. I am waiting to know the price to tell you where you can have it delivered. Not sure if he did pay money or got it as a gift in the end (Oesterreicher and Volz both say it was bequeathed to him), and what Algarotti said in his offer (his own letter isn't at Trier).
ETA: By the way, Oesterreicher totally agrees with you: ohnstreitig eines der schönsten Gemälde von Pesne. :) (And he speculates that it almost looks like Pesne might have been in love with the girl.)
just a single guard to make sure he's really dead for a night and to keep the cats and dogs from having a go at it
Incidentally, this is something I agonized over in "Grind." We have a hungry dog complaining about how there's nothing to eat, and there's a fresh corpse right there. :P But for obvious reasons I didn't want to touch that with a ten-foot-pole, and I decided to handwave it with "I don't know how long it takes before pets start eating their owners, but hopefully longer than 10 minutes?" And then cahn didn't call me on it while betaing, so I just went "la la la" in hopes no one would notice. ;)
There are other major plot holes that I agonized over, but so far, aside from Heinrich's mishandling of Fritz, no one's called me on them either, phew. My excuse for all is the deadline!
Given the way those dogs were spoiled with their food, I just assumed Alcmene was too much of a foodie to go near something like Fritz' corpse unless she was truly starving. :) More seriously, I do hope it takes a bit longer for pets to see their owners as food, yes. Mind you, whether or not I'm right about the casts and dogs mentioned by Heinrich being owned by the Comtesse de la Roche-Raymon, he was obviously unsentimental enough to assume they could have a go if not hindered. I'm not up to hit right now, but I do recall there are some gruesome stories about gnawed at royal corpses where no one was around keeping watch...
Given the way those dogs were spoiled with their food, I just assumed Alcmene was too much of a foodie to go near something like Fritz' corpse unless she was truly starving. :)
Well, now that I've seen the descriptions of the various roasts, the cakes, the buttery rolls, and the milk, I think you've got it, by Jove! :P
I like the idea of Alcmene as a foodie. :D Her modern AU counterpart can have an Instagram feed where she posts pictures of her food.
I'm not up to hit right now, but I do recall there are some gruesome stories about gnawed at royal corpses where no one was around keeping watch...
Ooh. Well, when you are, you know we want to hear them! I know of stories from modern news articles (and of course scavenging dogs on battlefields--they're in the first few lines of the Iliad for a reason!), but am not thinking of European royal examples off the top of my head.
I return my breath of life to the beneficial nature that graciously lent it to me, and my body to the elements of which it is made.
Oooh, I remembered the second part but had forgotten the first! Thank you!
I'm curious if he had a template/reference for that earlier scenario, do we know?
I don't. I assumed all those were attempts to keep it small and ceremony-less. At night so that no one sees it happening and no crowd gathers spontaneously. No one following, ditto. A lantern because it's night and there are no streetlamps. ;) And possibly as opposed to something fancier, like illuminating the gardens or whatever.
Gladly and without regret, I return my breath of life to the beneficial nature that graciously lent it to me, and my body to the elements of which it is made. I lived as a philosopher and want to be buried as such, without pageantry and ceremonial pomp. I don't want to be dissected or embalmed.
Oh lol, of course FW would have wanted to save money on embalming! Heh.
I suppose it could have been religious, at that. I was shocked to find when my mother-in-law died that there are American Protestants (their pastor, in particular) who have decided religious opinions against cremation, because in his mind it was correlated with not taking resurrection seriously. (Most Protestants I know don't necessarily choose cremation, but have no real religious opinion on it.)
There were various ways of disposing of the bodies of royals in medieval and early modern Europe that the Church was opposed to, so I have no idea what FW's religious beliefs were on the subject.
Embalming was a sign of having money, and it only became cost-effective enough for common people to use it in the 19th century. Now, I don't know that that was FW's objection, but it's a reasonable guess!
This is as good a point as any to bring up the manner in which the Habsburgs were buried. To quote a website: In Vienna there was the custom of separate burials for monarchs, princes, dukes and higher-ranking nobles. That is why the corpses of the Habsburgs are in the Capuchin Crypt, the entrails in the crypt of St. Stephen's Cathedral and the hearts in the "Herzl Crypt" in the Augustinian Church.
There is a lively discussion among historians as to what exactly this ritual refers to. It is possible that the ancient Egyptian pharaohs were models. There were also practical reasons, because the corpse could be better preserved, especially in the case of longer evacuations and laying out. Political backgrounds tend to be excluded.
Separate entombment was practiced long before the Habsburgs. Especially during the crusades, when many crusaders died far from home, it was customary to remove their organs, to boil the corpse with red wine in order for it to better survive the long return journey. The organs of Barbararossa (1122-1190) and Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199) were buried in other places.
This unusual Habsburg protocol was practiced until 1878. The entrails of the dead were removed, wrapped in silk scarves, placed in alcohol and the containers soldered shut. The heart as the seat of the soul was given a special place in a heart urn.
Founder of this tradition is said to be Ferdinand III. (1608-1657). He wanted the hearts of the Habsburgs to be laid out in the Augustinian Church. His successor, Ferdinand IV., venerated the Madonna of Loreto with her shrine in the Augustinian Church and decreed that his heart should be buried there.
This custom was particularly widespread among the Habsburgs in the 16th and 17th centuries. Later there were many exceptions. Emperor Franz Joseph was strictly against it and his body was completely buried in the Capuchin crypt.
The last emperor, Charles I, who died in exile on Madeira, was also buried there, but his heart is in the Swiss monastery of Muri, together with the heart of his wife Zita. Her body, however, rests in the Capuchin crypt and her burial was considered the last official imperial burial in 1989.
The son of the two, Otto Habsburg, is also in the Capuchin crypt, but his heart was buried at his own request in the Hungarian monastery of Pannonhalma. He was raised as a child by the monks of the monastery and had a special bond with Hungary.
Nowadays, this type of burial is generally no longer allowed in Austria. However, exemptions can be requested from the Ministry of Health.
As I think I mentioned before, the sole female non-Habsburg buried in the Capuchin crypt (body intact, one assumes) was MT's governess Karoline von Fuchs-Mollard, "die Fuchsin", because MT ordered it. The sole male non-Habsburg is Charles de Lorraine, Prince Bishop of Trier, who died surprisingly when visiting Vienna in 1715. (As this was two years before MT was born, his being buried there had nothing to do with her later marrying one of his relations and everything with his high standing as a prince of the church, one assumes.)
LOL. Here's a video of the so called "Knocking ceremony", last performed for Otto (von) Habsburg, last Archduke and Crown Prince of the old Empire (and Member of the European Parliament), at the Capuchine Crypt (where they keep most of the bodies). It would have been the same for MT (and FS, and Joseph):
First knock.
Monk: Who asks for entrance? Ceremonial master: (Name of Dead Habsburg), (All the Titles of Dead Habsburgs) (these are all Mt's titles, if you want to hear them listed out loud. Including "Duke/Duchess of Silesia", naturally. :)
Monk: We do not know him.
Second knock
Monk: Who asks for entrance?
Ceremonial Master: (Name of Dead Habsburg), (lists individual accomplishments of dead Habsburg)
Monk: We do not know him.
Third knock
Monk: Who asks for entrance?
Ceremonial Master: (Name of Dead Habsburg), a sinner.
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Re: Various questions from Mildred
Fritz, as we all know (contra Manger and Kletschke), wanted a simple funeral because he believed death was the end, and he wanted to be buried like a philosopher, not a king. I always assumed "no embalming" was part of that.
But SD. Huh. I would have assumed she would have gone full-blown royal treatment! Maybe it was modesty/squeamishness.
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Yeah, I think that's certainly a big part of it in Fritz' case, even including the "return to nature" aspect, see the introductory context in his will:
Gladly and without regret, I return my breath of life to the beneficial nature that graciously lent it to me, and my body to the elements of which it is made. I lived as a philosopher and want to be buried as such, without pageantry and ceremonial pomp. I don't want to be dissected or embalmed. [Followed by the vault details and the "like Moritz von Nassau, who was buried in a bosk" reference, i.e. more nature.]
That said, and Zimmermann aside, no autopsy (as opposed to no "kingly" embalming) might still have been an expression of his control issues, i.e. not wanting anybody to mess with his body after his death? Not sure how much his pragmatic belief that death was the end would have affected that, or what the general view of autopsies was around the time. But in addition to mentioning it in both versions of his will (see below), he also makes sure to include it in two "in case I get killed" instructions in 1757 (pre-Leuthen) and 1758 (pre-Zorndorf), solely, without mentioning embalming as well. So it must have been rather important to him. (The German version from 1758: Man soll mir nicht öffnen, sondern stille nach Sanssouci bringen und in meinem Garten begraben lassen.) By the way, the first of his wartime "in case I die" instructions from 1741 actually says he wants to be cremated (in the Roman style) and buried in an urn grave at Rheinsberg. Interesting to see the changes over time.
Speaking of! I just realized that there were two versions of his will, 1752 and 1769, and that the second is slightly different and condensed when it comes to the burial instructions, i.e. he left out the whole dramatic "third day at midnight, by latern light, nobody following" part in the second one. (The middle step being a simple "at night" in 1757.) I'm curious if he had a template/reference for that earlier scenario, do we know?
Also, Preuss says that the 1769 testament was opened and read by the Minister of State v. Hertzberg, on August 18, 1786, at the castle of Berlin, in the presence of the new king, of the princes Heinrich and Ferdinand, and of the Minister of State Count Finck of Finckenstein, which made me wonder if we have any comments from Heinrich (or Ferdinand) about FWII disregarding Fritz' wishes?
Re: Various questions from Mildred
I'm sure Heinrich would have said something on this matter to his personal circle of friends, but alas, Lehndorff's diaries from that time are lost. Anyway, I just checked with Ziebura again who gives Heinrich's precise orders for how his dead body and funeral are to be handled, and while he doesn't mention either prohibiting or allowing autopsy or embalming, the rest is very Fritz like, as befits l'autre moi-meme, especially point 5 (wants to be dressed in his oldest uniform, and if his legs are swollen, the boots can be cut upon, he doesn't want to be a disgusting spectacle for the world), 10) (no torches around his body when it's laid out, just a single guard to make sure he's really dead for a night and to keep the cats and dogs from having a go at it, no flowers and other decorations on his coffin), and 9) Count Roedern is supposed to remind the King (FW3) that the Comte de la Roche-Raymon is in charge of the funeral and that Heinrich wants to be buried at Rheinsberg in the vault he built for himself, with the epitaph he wrote.
BTW, cats and dogs: I never realised this before, but that means Heinrich must have kept some at Rheinsberg, or people from his household did.
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Evidently! I think I had raised an eyebrow at that when reading Ziebura, but then totally forgotten (has it really been almost a year? OMG), so thank you for the reminder! Since we don't hear about them from Lehndorff, I'm guessing they weren't nearly as important to Heinrich as the greyhounds were to Fritz.
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Aw, I remember reading these points but had forgotten about them. Heinrich <3333
Re: Various questions from Mildred
1752:
13. I will bequeath four hand horses from my stable and accessories to my brother Heinrich.
for comparison, Ferdinand:
16. To my brother Ferdinand, who has always shown me friendship, 20,000 thalers, 100 buckets of Hungarian wine, six hand horses with their saddlecloths, a team of Prussian horses and the second set of my silver service in Potsdam.
Whereas in 1769, it's this:
9. To my brother Heinrich 200,000 thalers, 50 buckets of Hungarian wine, a beautiful rock crystal chandelier from Potsdam, the green diamond that I wear on my finger, two hand horses with accessories and a team of six Prussian horses.
13. To my dear brother Ferdinand, 50,000 thalers, 50 buckets of Hungarian wine, a gala carriage with a team of horses and all accessories.
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Re: Various questions from Mildred
"For Heinrich, who saved my ass in the Seven Years' War..."
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Re: Various questions from Mildred
11. I am bequeathing to my sister, the Queen of Sweden, one of my golden boxes valued at 10,000 thalers, 20 buckets of Hungarian wine and a painting of Pesne in the Sanssouci Palace, which I received from Algarotti.
Of course I got curious, so I looked it up and it's apparently this one (in colour), with the inscription Unter dem Kissen [Under the Pillow]— Ant. Pesne fecit 1706.
Oesterreicher says "A charming peasant girl in the window with her head resting on her right arm. Light and shadow have a splendid effect in this painting, the painter represented bare [bloße] nature. [He sure did.] *
* The Count Algarotti bequeathed this painting to His Majesty the King.
Fritz also mentions that Algarotti offered him a Pesne painting in his last letter to Algarotti, which I assume was this one, so they had talked about it before and I'm not entirely sure if it was a formal last will thing from Algarotti or just coincided with his death.
Nevertheless, I have questions! Did Algarotti think that Fritz would simply like to have a Pesne painting or was the motif relevant innuendo? The inscription? And why on earth did Fritz bequeath it to Ulrike - did she come across it during a visit and she and Fritz talked about it? Inside joke? Does she have a connection to Algarotti at all or is it just the fact that Pesne painted it? It's not like Fritz didn't have hundreds of other paintings to give, so why this one?
Pesne painting
did she come across it during a visit?
Not unless Algarotti gave it to Fritz before 1744, when Ulrike got married and moved to Sweden. At this point, Sanssouci didn't exist yet, but Fritz could of course have hung the picture elsewhere. The 1771 visit to Brandenburg was Ulrike's first after her marriage, so she can't have seen the painting in Sanssouci at the point when Fritz is making this will. If she knows it, she must have seen it before 1744 in Potsdam and Berlin. Now, since Pesne lived in Brandenburg since F1 hired him as court painter - and was among the people FW didn't fire (he just cut the salary Pesne was receiving by half) -, this wouldn't be that difficult. Ulrike was portrayed by Pesne as were her siblings, after all. (There is a portrait of her hanging in Rheinsberg today.) Maybe, just maybe, instead of Pesne coming to her rooms, she was allowed to visit his studio and pose there, which means she could have seen the painting there?
Alas, though, dates argue against it. Pesne was appointed court painter by F1 in 1711; this painting hails from 1706. At which point young Pesne was living in....Venice. Where Algarotti is from. Which would explain why Algarotti owns a painting of the Prussian court painter to give to Fritz that the royal family doesn't own already. (Meaning young Pesne probably sold the painting back then to some Venetian noble and Algarotti, who could have seen it in Palazzo X, aquired it there.
As to why this painting of a peasant girl with cleavage, well, as my Aged Parent noted, there is no lack of female half nudes or nudes at Sanssouci anyway, enough to make him question Fritz' sexuality again. And it is a beautiful painting. I think it's probably no more complicated than Algarotti knowing Fritz would like such a good Pesne.
As to why Fritz should think Ulrike would like it, well, see above. The only way she could have known it was if she'd seen it before 1744, which could be the case if Pesne didn't sell it while in Venice but kept it and brought it with him to Berlin. Which is also possible, though in that case I question why Algarotti owned it before Fritz did.
Re: Pesne painting
So
a) she didn't know it at all - which still begs the question why that one, because Fritz must have owned lots of other Pesne paintings if he wanted to give her one for what I'd assume is nostalgia's sake, and also, nobody else got a painting in the second will (Wilhelmine got two in the first one, a Rubens and a Van Dyck). I might have said that he was simply looking at it while writing the will, but he wrote in January again, so definitely not.
or
b) Pesne did have it with him in Berlin and she (they) knew it from back then. By the way, thanks for pointing out the Venice connection, I'd have missed that. Like you, I'm leaning towards Pesne not having it with him in Berlin, because of the date of the painting and the Algarotti connection.
Speaking of, this is what Fritz writes in June 1764: I am very much obliged to you for the part which you take in what concerns me, and for the painting by Pesne which you offer me. I am waiting to know the price to tell you where you can have it delivered. Not sure if he did pay money or got it as a gift in the end (Oesterreicher and Volz both say it was bequeathed to him), and what Algarotti said in his offer (his own letter isn't at Trier).
ETA: By the way, Oesterreicher totally agrees with you: ohnstreitig eines der schönsten Gemälde von Pesne. :) (And he speculates that it almost looks like Pesne might have been in love with the girl.)
Re: Pesne painting
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Incidentally, this is something I agonized over in "Grind." We have a hungry dog complaining about how there's nothing to eat, and there's a fresh corpse right there. :P But for obvious reasons I didn't want to touch that with a ten-foot-pole, and I decided to handwave it with "I don't know how long it takes before pets start eating their owners, but hopefully longer than 10 minutes?" And then
There are other major plot holes that I agonized over, but so far, aside from Heinrich's mishandling of Fritz, no one's called me on them either, phew. My excuse for all is the deadline!
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Dog diets
Well, now that I've seen the descriptions of the various roasts, the cakes, the buttery rolls, and the milk, I think you've got it, by Jove! :P
I like the idea of Alcmene as a foodie. :D Her modern AU counterpart can have an Instagram feed where she posts pictures of her food.
I'm not up to hit right now, but I do recall there are some gruesome stories about gnawed at royal corpses where no one was around keeping watch...
Ooh. Well, when you are, you know we want to hear them! I know of stories from modern news articles (and of course scavenging dogs on battlefields--they're in the first few lines of the Iliad for a reason!), but am not thinking of European royal examples off the top of my head.
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Oooh, I remembered the second part but had forgotten the first! Thank you!
I'm curious if he had a template/reference for that earlier scenario, do we know?
I don't. I assumed all those were attempts to keep it small and ceremony-less. At night so that no one sees it happening and no crowd gathers spontaneously. No one following, ditto. A lantern because it's night and there are no streetlamps. ;) And possibly as opposed to something fancier, like illuminating the gardens or whatever.
But maybe he had a template in mind!
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Ohhhh, I really like that.
Re: Various questions from Mildred
I suppose it could have been religious, at that. I was shocked to find when my mother-in-law died that there are American Protestants (their pastor, in particular) who have decided religious opinions against cremation, because in his mind it was correlated with not taking resurrection seriously. (Most Protestants I know don't necessarily choose cremation, but have no real religious opinion on it.)
Re: Various questions from Mildred
Embalming was a sign of having money, and it only became cost-effective enough for common people to use it in the 19th century. Now, I don't know that that was FW's objection, but it's a reasonable guess!
Re: Various questions from Mildred
In Vienna there was the custom of separate burials for monarchs, princes, dukes and higher-ranking nobles. That is why the corpses of the Habsburgs are in the Capuchin Crypt, the entrails in the crypt of St. Stephen's Cathedral and the hearts in the "Herzl Crypt" in the Augustinian Church.
There is a lively discussion among historians as to what exactly this ritual refers to. It is possible that the ancient Egyptian pharaohs were models. There were also practical reasons, because the corpse could be better preserved, especially in the case of longer evacuations and laying out. Political backgrounds tend to be excluded.
Separate entombment was practiced long before the Habsburgs. Especially during the crusades, when many crusaders died far from home, it was customary to remove their organs, to boil the corpse with red wine in order for it to better survive the long return journey. The organs of Barbararossa (1122-1190) and Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199) were buried in other places.
This unusual Habsburg protocol was practiced until 1878. The entrails of the dead were removed, wrapped in silk scarves, placed in alcohol and the containers soldered shut. The heart as the seat of the soul was given a special place in a heart urn.
Founder of this tradition is said to be Ferdinand III. (1608-1657). He wanted the hearts of the Habsburgs to be laid out in the Augustinian Church. His successor, Ferdinand IV., venerated the Madonna of Loreto with her shrine in the Augustinian Church and decreed that his heart should be buried there.
This custom was particularly widespread among the Habsburgs in the 16th and 17th centuries. Later there were many exceptions. Emperor Franz Joseph was strictly against it and his body was completely buried in the Capuchin crypt.
The last emperor, Charles I, who died in exile on Madeira, was also buried there, but his heart is in the Swiss monastery of Muri, together with the heart of his wife Zita. Her body, however, rests in the Capuchin crypt and her burial was considered the last official imperial burial in 1989.
The son of the two, Otto Habsburg, is also in the Capuchin crypt, but his heart was buried at his own request in the Hungarian monastery of Pannonhalma. He was raised as a child by the monks of the monastery and had a special bond with Hungary.
Nowadays, this type of burial is generally no longer allowed in Austria. However, exemptions can be requested from the Ministry of Health.
As I think I mentioned before, the sole female non-Habsburg buried in the Capuchin crypt (body intact, one assumes) was MT's governess Karoline von Fuchs-Mollard, "die Fuchsin", because MT ordered it. The sole male non-Habsburg is Charles de Lorraine, Prince Bishop of Trier, who died surprisingly when visiting Vienna in 1715. (As this was two years before MT was born, his being buried there had nothing to do with her later marrying one of his relations and everything with his high standing as a prince of the church, one assumes.)
Freaking weird Habsburg burial protocols
Re: Freaking weird Habsburg burial protocols
First knock.
Monk: Who asks for entrance?
Ceremonial master: (Name of Dead Habsburg), (All the Titles of Dead Habsburgs) (these are all Mt's titles, if you want to hear them listed out loud. Including "Duke/Duchess of Silesia", naturally. :)
Monk: We do not know him.
Second knock
Monk: Who asks for entrance?
Ceremonial Master: (Name of Dead Habsburg), (lists individual accomplishments of dead Habsburg)
Monk: We do not know him.
Third knock
Monk: Who asks for entrance?
Ceremonial Master: (Name of Dead Habsburg), a sinner.
Monk: He/She may enter.
Re: Freaking weird Habsburg burial protocols