Prince Karl Eusebius I von Liechtenstein
1611–1684
Anonymous Master, Portrait of the young Prince Karl Eusebius I von Liechtenstein, c. 1630
Predecessor
Prince Karl I von Liechtenstein
Prince Karl Eusebius I lived in very difficult times. As a result of constant troop movements and plundering during the course of the Thirty Years War the princely estates in Bohemia, Moravia and Lower Austria went into economic decline. In 1645 the incursion of Swedish troops forced Karl Eusebius I. and his wife to flee to Graz. On his return he devoted himself to rebuilding the family estates that had been destroyed. Karl Eusebius I. was a passionate collector and commissioned a number of important architectural projects. With the “Assumption of the Virgin” he acquired the first painting by Peter Paul Rubens in the Princely Collections.
Born on 11 April 1611, Karl Eusebius I was the only son of Karl I and his wife Anna Maria. In September 1644 he married Countess Johanna Beatrix von Dietrichstein-Nikolsburg (c. 1625–1676). The couple had eleven children, including Karl Eusebius’s I successor Johann Adam Andreas I von Liechtenstein. Karl Eusebius I died at Schwarzkosteletz (Kostelec nad Černými lesy) near Prague on 5 February 1684.
VALUES FOR SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS
Still a minor on the death of his father in 1627, at the age of eighteen Karl Eusebius I (1628/29) embarked on his ‘gentleman’s tour’, an educational journey that was customary for young aristocrats during the Baroque era. This took him to the German principalities in the Spanish Netherlands and to France. He spent more than a year in Brussels, where he studied law.
After the end of his uncle Maximilian’s regency, Karl Eusebius I succeeded to his inheritance in 1632. Alongside day-to-day concerns two great passions determined the prince’s life: horse-breeding and art, in particular architecture. These interests also found expression in his three treatises, which have been preserved in manuscript: one dealing with architecture (the “Werk von der Architektur”), a second containing comprehensive instruction ‘for his son’ in all aspects of aristocratic life – ruling, administration and economic management, and a third with extensive instructions on how to run his horse-breeding stud.
They were intended as a legacy not only to his successor, the later Prince Johann Adam Andreas I, but for all following generations. They contained guidelines for preserving, upholding and passing on the family’s core values. These included both the material values of building and conserving the family fortunes and the ideal values of cultivating an aristocratic lifestyle, and not least caring for the family’s art collection and architectural treasures.
Karl Eusebius I’s treatises were not only a legacy to his son, later Prince Johann Adam Andreas I, but to following generations.
Karl Eusebius I regularly emphasized that a ‘prince must be curious’, by which he meant careful and circumspect in derivation from the Latin word ‘cura’ (care). However, he also meant curiosity and thirst for knowledge, which together with caution in the handling of acquisitions are qualities required for increasing and expanding a collection.
ARTISTIC EDIFICES
In his “Werk von der Architektur” Karl Eusebius I also refers to the obligation to use acquired riches to create ‘handsome monuments … to eternal an immortal memory’, as only beautiful buildings can lend immortality to the name of him who raised them.
He made an impressive start in this regard with the parish church in Feldsberg (Valtice). In 1631 the foundation stone was laid for the new church, whose design is associated with Giovanni Battista Carlone (1580/90–1645) and Giovanni Giacomo Tencalla (1593–1653). In this project the prince’s interests as architectural patron and art collector met, in that he acquired Rubens’s “Assumption of the Virgin” as the altarpiece for the high altar. Painted for a church in Antwerp between 1635 and 1637, it was copied in 1643 when already in the prince’s ownership. The painting furnishes proof of how great the interest in works by Rubens must have been. Today it hangs in the Liechtenstein Garden Palace, after a copy had been created for the church in 1764 by Vincenzio Fanti (1719–1776), then director of the Collections and himself an artist.
A beautiful edifice lends immortality to him who raised it, postulates Karl Eusebius I in his “Werk von der Architektur”.
The desire to combine the necessity of managing the family’s estates with his passion for architecture and art found expression in further architectural projects. In Dobrau at Aussee in Mähren (Úsov) Karl Eusebius I had a stud built between 1633 and 1641, followed by a large estate farm with sculptural decoration at Eisgrub (Lednice). This aspiration also manifested itself in his ongoing devotion to the gardens at Eisgrub. From 1635 more than fifteen fountains were installed and large numbers of exotic plants were purchased. Orangeries were erected in 1642, and a new hothouse for bitter oranges was added in 1656.
TREASURES FROM ALL GENRES OF ART
Karl Eusebius I was the first in his family to make systematic use of the fine art trade in order to acquire paintings and sculptures for the collection. It was during his time that the relationship began with the Antwerp family of dealers called Forchondt, who had a branch on Vienna’s Judenplatz. As the first acquisition during the course of a long-standing business connection the prince purchased the “Peasants Smoking” by Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685). Van Ostade’s “Peasant Dance in a Barn”, sold from the collections by Prince Johann II (1840–1929) in the nineteenth century, was bought back by Prince Hans-Adam II (b. 1945) in 2007.
Karl Eusebius I went on to acquire pieces such as the “Portrait of a Young Man” by a French master, the painting of “St John the Baptist in the Wilderness” attributed to Giulio Romano (1499–1546) and Jan de Cock’s (1480–1527) “St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit in the Wilderness”, previously long in the ownership of Rubens.
Karl Eusebius I was the first in his family to make systematic use of the fine art trade in order to acquire paintings and sculptures for the collection.
Karl Eusebius I was keenly interested in sculpture. Among other works he acquired “Apollo and Cupid” and “Mercury” by François Duquesnoy (1597–1643), as well as Giovanni Francesco Susini’s (1585–1653) “Lion Attacking a Horse”, cast after an original design by Giambologna (1529–1608).
Finally, we have documentary evidence for the commission given to Dionysio Miseroni (1607–1661) for the large “Maienkrug”, a showpiece vessel cut from a topaz weighing 35 pounds that the prince had purchased for twelve hundred gulden in 1638. Evidently he had inherited his father’s interest in ‘pietre dure’. In 1635 while visiting Florence he acquired a large table top by Giuliano di Piero Pandolfini (c. 1590–1637), one of the most important works to emerge from the grand-ducal pietre dure workshops in Florence from this time, and had his own coat of arms incorporated at the centre.
