Invitation to a press conference on "... the beauty of the whole world" Heinrich Taddel and his Stone Cabinet in the Green Vault”
16 June 2023MI
In June 2023, the 300th anniversary of the Grünes Gewölbe is being celebrated with an exhibition dedicated to the fascinating beauty and variety of gemstones. At its heart is an artist who has rarely been in the spotlight to date – the goldsmith, gentleman of the privy chamber and inspector of the Grünes Gewölbe Heinrich Taddel (1714–1794) – and his unique Steinkabinett, originally made up of 214 specimens of gemstone varieties, mostly from Saxony, but also from all over the world.
Restorers and art historians from the Grünes Gewölbe and mineralogists from TU Bergakademie Freiberg worked together on an interdisciplinary research project for more than six years. The aim of this joint undertaking was not only to identify each stone and its geological origin precisely, but also to compare them with materials from historical Saxon mineralogical collections. Their findings have shed whole new light on this as yet rarely investigated subject, and provide unexpected clues to how numerous carved stone pieces were created and the important role they played in the royal collections at the Grünes Gewölbe.
Many of Taddel’s stone specimens came into the possession of the court jeweller Johann Christian Neuber (1736–1808), who used them in his artworks. After Neuber went bankrupt, many pieces found their way into the Bergakademie Freiberg minerals depot, and from there into the collections of Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749–1817), one of the founders of mineralogy. Others were preserved in different private collections and entered the Dresden Cabinet of Minerals later on. Previously unresearched objects in the museum’s care have been compared with Taddel’s Steinkabinett, enabling them to be newly identified, and allowing artefacts once cut and made from the same stone sample to be reunited after more than 200 years.
The exhibition brings together stone specimens from Taddel’s Steinkabinett with some 30 items from the Grünes Gewölbe and roughly 60 exhibits from the mineralogical collections of our partner on this project, Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, and those of the Kunstgewerbemuseum and Porzellansammlung, both run by Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. These are accompanied by items on loan from the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden, the Museum of Natural History in Schloss Bertholdsburg in Schleusingen, Kulturstiftung Dessau-Wörlitz, Freiberg Museum of Town History and Mining and other private collections.
The presentation in the Sponsel Room showcases the complex research work that has been carried out and raises questions in the fields of both the natural sciences and the humanities that extend far beyond the confines of the Grünes Gewölbe. It also reveals the stones’ incredible appearance and rich variety, aspects that can often only be seen in their full glory under a microscope.
To accompany the exhibition, the catalogue “…die Schönheit der ganzen Welt” (The Beauty of the Whole World) is to be published by Sandstein Verlag. Edited by Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg; Gerhard Heide; Ulf Kempe; Michael Wagner; Marius Winzeler; 256 pages, 470 colour illustrations, € 28.00. ISBN 978‑3‑95498‑751‑1.
