VIII. The king's bedroom. The subjects from Theocritus, by different painters, but principally Professor Heinrich Hess and Bruchmann. This room pleased me least.
No description could give an adequate idea of the endless variety, and graceful and luxuriant ornament harmonizing with the various subjects, and the purpose of each room, and lavished on the walls and ceilings, even to infinitude. The general style is very properly borrowed from the Greek decorations at Herculaneum and Pompeii; not servilely copied, but varied with an exhaustless prodigality of fancy and invention, and applied with exquisite taste. The combination of the gayest, brightest colours has been studied with care, their proportion and approximation calculated on scientific principles; so that the result, instead of being gaudy and perplexing to the eye, is an effect the most captivating, brilliant, and harmonious that can be conceived.
The material used is the encaustic painting, which has been revived by M. de Klenze. He spent four months at Naples analysing the colours used in the encaustic paintings at Herculaneum and Pompeii, and by innumerable experiments reducing the process to safe practice. Professor Zimmermann explained to me the other day, as I stood beside him while he worked, the general principle, and the advantages of this style. It is much more rapid than oil painting; it is also much less expensive, requiring both cheaper materials and in smaller quantity. It dries more quickly: the surface is not so glazy and unequal, requiring no particular light to be seen to advantage. The colours are wonderfully bright: it is capable of as high a finish, and it is quite as durable as oils. Both mineral and vegetable colours can be used.
Now to return. The king's bedchamber opens into the queen's apartments, but to take these in order we must begin at the beginning. The staircase, which is still unfinished, will be in a much richer style of architecture than that on the king's side: it is sustained with beautiful columns of native marble.
I. Antechamber; painted from the history and poems of Walther von der Vogelweide, by Gassen of Coblentz, a young painter of distinguished merit.
Walther "of the bird-meadow," for that is the literal signification of his name, was one of the most celebrated of the early Suabian Minnesingers,[ 2] and appears to have lived from 1190 to 1240. He led a wandering life, and was at different times in the service of several princes of Germany. He figured at the famous "strife of poets," at the castle of Wartsburg, which took place in 1207, in presence of Hermann, landgrave of Thuringia and the landgravine Sophia: this is one of the most celebrated incidents in the history of German poetry. He also accompanied Leopold VII. to the Holy Land. His songs are warlike, patriotic, moral, and religious. "Of love he has always the highest conception, as of a principle of action, a virtue, a religious affection; and in his estimation of female excellence, he is below none of his contemporaries."[ 3]
In the centre of the ceiling is represented the poetical contest at Wartsburg, and Walther is reciting his verses in presence of his rivals and the assembled judges. At the upper end of the room Walther is exhibited exactly as he describes himself in one of his principal poems, seated on a high rock in a melancholy attitude, leaning on his elbow, and contemplating the troubles of his desolate country; in the opposite arch, the old poet is represented as feeding the little birds which are fluttering round him—in allusion to his will, which directed that the birds should be fed yearly upon his tomb. Another compartment represents Walther showing to his Geliebte (his mistress) the reflection of her own lovely face in his polished shield. There are other subjects which I cannot recall. The figures in all these groups are the size of life.
II. The next room is painted from the poems of Wolfram of Eschenbach, another, and one of the most fertile of the old Minnesingers; he also was present at the contest at Wartsburg, "and wandered from castle to castle like a true courteous knight, dividing his time between feats of arms and minstrelsy." He versified, in the German tongue, the romance of the "Saint-Greal," making it an original production, and the central point, if the expression may be allowed, of an innumerable variety of adventures, which he has combined, like Ariosto, in artful perplexity, in the poems of Percival and Titurel.[ 4] These adventures furnish the subjects of the paintings on the ceiling and walls, which are executed by Hermann of Dresden, one of the most distinguished of the pupils of Cornelius.
The ornaments in these two rooms, which are exceedingly rich and appropriate, are in the old gothic style, and reminded me of the illuminations in the ancient MSS.