A Visit to the Residenz Museum Day 2 with R and J

On our second day together in Munich, we decided to head back into the city center to visit the Residenz Museum. This museum was once the central inner city palace for the Wittelsbach family. It is the largest city palace in Germany, and contains over 130 rooms and ten separate courtyards. A couple of pictures of the façade are included below (from Wikipedia).

Next you can see a picture of Jeremy and me, Mark, standing in Odeonsplatz with the Residenz museum in the background. You can also see one of the famous entrances to the palace behind us to the right, with the tall, elegant archway and two royal lions guarding each side of the entrance. It is a Munich tradition to rub the noses of the lions for good luck. A true Munchener will never walk by without performing this ritual. Rachel snapped a good photo showing just how polished their noses are from all the touching.

The Residenz palace is massive; you could spend days just wandering through the various rooms and courtyards. Perhaps one of the most famous rooms in the palace is referred to as the Antiquarium, which is a massive dining hall, arched and sculpted with literally hundreds of Greek and roman busts placed throughout the room. Additionally, the vaults and ceilings are painted with famous historical scenes and images of other major towns and cities in Bavaria. The royal family would eat on a raised dais at one end of the room, while their guests would dine on the lower level below.

As you wander through the museum, the collections and treasures just overwhelm you. While the building itself is truly spectacular, there are collections of porcelain, jewels, coins, and relics that just leave you speechless. We spent quite some time viewing the pottery and porcelain collections. The early European rulers, including the Wittelsbach family, were fascinated by Chinese porcelain, and voraciously collected these items.

It is estimated that the collection at the Residenz museum, combined with the collection at the nearby Nymphenburg Palace, may comprise the single best porcelain collection in the world. In the early 1600’s, when the china trade started to bring porcelain to Europe, the European royal families would  send orders to China to have special pieces made just for them. Thus you see many early pieces with the Bavarian blue and white checkerboard coat of arms.  It is rumored that somehow the Europeans, who lusted after this product so dearly, were finally able to steal the recipe from the Chinese and begin porcelain production in Germany sometime around 1710. Many of the early manufacturers still exist today, and there are both Nyphemburg and Meissen porcelain stores in the heart of Munich, just two blocks from the present Residenz Museum.

After the porcelain collection, you come to a room referred to as Scharzer Saal (Black Hall) due to the four portals of imitation black marble that frame the doorways. However, once you enter the room, your eye is drawn up to the ceiling and the magnificent painting that makes the ceiling look vaulted when, in fact, it is really flat. An earlier name for this room was, fittingly, Perspektiv Saal. When Deborah first came here during her very first visit to Munich, she was truly entranced. As you walk from one side of the room to the other, the ceiling itself seems to move! We do not know how this effect was achieved, but it is spectacular. The ceiling was originally done in 1602 (thank God for Wikipedia), but was destroyed during WWII and later reproduced. No camera can accurately capture the effect; you'll have to come see it for yourself, but I have included a photo taken by Rachel. Another shot, which I like of Jeremy and Rachel, with Jeremy looking very mature and professional, also gives you a hint of the effect. You will notice that Jeremy is wearing a suit jacket! He forgot his own jacket at home and had to borrow one of mine.

The Residenz palace includes large wings devoted to the living quarters for the various family members. The rooms were set up such that you entered at one end of the wing, and depending upon your status and importance, were allowed to move through the rooms and, if important enough, actually get to see the King or the Queen (or the Elector and his consort). This picture sort of gives you a sense for how the wings go on and on.

The collections in the Residenz are almost endless. Two rooms exhibit collections of silver used at various times during the reign of the Wittelsbachs. Below is one of the rooms with the silver serving pieces protected inside plexiglass.

Toward the end of the tour, you come to one of the most amazing Roccoco rooms in all of Germany. This is referred to as the Hall of the Ancestors, and includes paintings of the Wittelsbach family going all the way back to the 1100’s. There are perhaps a hundred or so paintings of the family, all arranged in this garish, glittering, and over-the-top setting.

We also came across two fabulous statues towards the end of the tour, one of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and the other of Poseidon. Both of these were at one time fountains and existed outside in two of the courtyards at the Residenz. The statue of Perseus is truly powerful with his muscles rippling and his determination evident after cutting off the head of Medusa. As you stand there, you can almost feel the power and the tension in the setting. Rachel took these really nice pictures of this bronze work. When it was in the courtyard as a fountain, the water dripped (or gushed, shall we say)out of Medusa’s head and from her neck as he stands on her.

The second bronze, of Poseidon, is also remarkable in its detail and beauty, but as Rachel said, and captured in her photos below, there is definitely a sadness that seems to emanate from him.

But for all these wondrous riches that the Wittelsbach family possessed, the most important thing in their lives was the Church. Throughout the Residenz are a number of chapels that the family used for their services. The photo below shows one of the private chapels where the family and their guests attended Mass. The family would sit on the altar, while their guests would sit behind them on the lower level.

There also was another chapel, used only by Duke Maximillian I and his wife for private prayer and worship. This was a richly decorated, small room that also held the family's relics. The photos below try to convey the detail and rich symbology in the room. The walls are done in an art style know as Scagliola where tiny pieces of clay are colored and then inlayed to build up a larger picture. The scenes on the walls show Mary and Joseph on their travels to Jerusalem and were inspired by Albrecht Durer's woodcuts of this subject. It has taken Deborah and I a couple of visits to piece together some of this history of the art and architecture. 

But of all the riches they possessed, none of them rivaled the power and reverence that their religious relics signified. During historical times, the Catholic Church would grant to certain wealthy and powerful families the privilege to own religious relics. This privilege was given to Duke Wilhelm V in 1577. His son, Maximillian I, expanded the collection of relics and kept them in the Reiche Kappele (completed in 1607), the chapel you see in the above photos. The relics include the bones of a saint, or the clothing or even something that they owned or touched. Praying in their presence was believed to facilitate a direct, Divine connection with God. Reliquaries are the containers that house the relics. Since the relics themselves were considered "more valuable than precious stones and more esteemed than gold," it was considered only appropriate that they be enshrined in vessels crafted of or covered by gold, silver, ivory, gems, and enamel. These precious objects constituted a major form of artistic production across Europe and Byzantium throughout the Middle Ages. 

Now, however, the Reliquary Room contains the relics owned by the museum. Entering this room for the first time, you are at first uncertain as to the contents and the significance of the items. But, as you look and read about these items you are captured by the history and the potential significance of what you are looking at. The authenticity of these items is always of concern, but nonetheless, you must respect and accept that these items held a powerful sway on the people who collected them and the culture that supported them. To give you a sense of their importance, up until 1969 a relic was placed under the altar stone of every Catholic Church.

Below is a picture of a relic and the elaborate enclosure in which it was placed. If you look closely at the third photo, you can see that it is a skull with a pearl necklace surrounding it. This is said to be a piece of the skull cap of John the Baptist. Perhaps most arresting of all was the central display in the room which supposedly contains the mummified remains of the first born sons killed by Herod. This is the first two photos you see below.

After a long day of touring, we signed the visitors log book and were ready to head back to the flat. As you can see, we lamented Mike's presence on our journey, but he and Christy are scheduled to arrive on Easter Sunday.