The Arcanum (23 page)

The short journey through the streets of his capital to the Japanese Palace would have taken him past the Zwinger—the “Tuileries
of Dresden” —the magnificent Baroque pleasure pavilion next to his castle where musical extravaganzas, animal fights, military
spectacles and operas were regularly performed to impress visiting dignitaries and entertain the court. He would then have
crossed the grand stone bridge, 166 meters long and 11 meters broad, that linked the old city to the Neustadt on the Elbe's
eastern bank and skirted a profusion of newly built grand stone facades. This part of the city had been devastated by fire
early in his reign, but by waiving ten years' taxes for anyone who built there and introducing stringent building laws he
had encouraged the construction of innumerable mansions in a coherent architectural style. He must have reflected with pride
that during the course of his thirty-eight-year reign, he had seen Dresden change from an insignificant Renaissance town into
one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a magnet for travelers of wealth and nobility. Even the King of Prussia had
admitted that the luxuries of life here “could not have been greater at the court of Louis XIV.”

Arriving at the Japanese Palace, Augustus surveyed the interior decorations and the new deliveries from Meissen with satisfaction.
With Kaendler ensconced in the factory and overseeing the design of commissions, his dream palace was at last taking shape.

Quantities of massive porcelain animals for the upper gallery had already arrived by boat from Meissen and he examined each
with care. The king was fascinated by zoology and kept a menagerie of live animals at the nearby Jägerhof (a converted hunting
lodge), many of which had been collected on a special expedition to Africa that he had sponsored. He had also built an aviary
at Moritzburg for a vast collection of exotic birds, and he had another collection of stuffed animal specimens and various
other natural curiosities. He was well able to recognize, therefore, the outstanding naturalism of Kaendler's work, the result
of long hours spent watching and sketching the animals and birds from life. The base of the figure of a stork was woven with
reeds and lily pads and enlivened with a frog and a cluster of snails. A huge pelican was shown with its head thrown dramatically
back as, open-beaked, it swallowed a scaly fish. A scrawny-necked, ruffle-feathered vulture was depicted consuming a sinewed
strip of meat. Porcelain had never come so close to imitating the essence of life itself.

Soon after Augustus's inspection of the Japanese Palace urgent matters of state called him to Poland. The matter of who held
the throne of Poland had traditionally been decided by election, but as he drew near to the end of his life Augustus longed
to establish Saxony's hereditary right to it. Before leaving for Warsaw he decided to pay a brief, informal visit to the Meissen
factory. It was destined to be his last. Arriving at the Albrechtsburg castle on November 8, he could already see the effects
of the changes he had made since taking charge of the factory.

The painting departments, the kilns and the stores had all been expanded to cope with the vast orders for the porcelain palace.
A new firewood lift, an extraordinary horse-driven conveyor-belt contraption linking the cellars of the castle to the river
landing stage below, had been constructed. This would save on the cost of bringing the vast quantities of wood needed to fire
the new kilns into the castle precincts. A physician had been brought in to improve the workers' health. The fumes from the
kilns were highly toxic, respiratory diseases were endemic, and it was rare for those constantly exposed to the belching smoke
to live past middle age.

While the king was making his tour of inspection a trial firing of one of the newly constructed kilns was taking place. As
the door of the kiln was opened and the wares, safely protected in their stone saggers, were expertly removed, Augustus could
not have failed to draw a comparison between the now well-practiced routine and the highly charged moment, nearly a quarter
of a century earlier, when Böttger, clad in soot-covered rags, had opened his primitive furnace to give him his first glimpse
of true European porcelain.

The progress since then had been truly phenomenal. Böttger's porcelain had not only beautified his palaces, it was bringing
in more money than any other manufacturing industry in the country. Augustus's porcelain mania and Böttger's quest for gold
had spawned an industrial showpiece, Europe's most highly specialized, productive and efficient corporation.

A few days after his visit to the Albrechtsburg, Augustus left Dresden for Poland. As he slowly and deliberately climbed into
the royal carriage his attendants must have remarked that the king's lameness was more marked than ever. The old injury to
his foot had become inflamed, his legs were more swollen. Royal physicians had treated him with various pills and by bloodletting,
but had warned him that unless he curtailed his excesses the condition would not improve. Augustus, as usual, had chosen to
ignore their advice. In fact, he was probably suffering from diabetes (unknown at the time), a symptom of which is foot ulcers
that when not properly tended can cause blood poisoning.

Crossing Prussian territory en route to Warsaw, Augustus had a prearranged meeting with an advisor to the King of Prussia,
General Friedrich Wilhelm Grumbkow, with the intention of discussing some of his political schemes. On hearing of the planned
meeting, Frederick William I, the soldier king of Prussia, had given Grumbkow orders to try to extract as much useful
off-the-record
information as he could. Grumbkow decided that the best way to carry out this order was to get Augustus as drunk as possible
and the two embarked on a gargantuan drinking spree with Grumbkow plying Augustus with quantities of wine while secretly watering
down his own intake. It was to be Augustus's last spree—his body could no longer cope with such continual overindulgence.
Soon after his arrival in Warsaw he lapsed into delirium and, eventually, a coma from which he never recovered.

It was certainly not the sort of death he would have chosen for himself, for when he heard the story of the French regent,
the Duc d'Orleans, who was rumored to have died in the midst of an epic lovemaking session with his mistress, Augustus was
recorded to have declared, “Oh that I could die in such a way.” His was to be a lingering, less pleasurable end. Despite the
best efforts of the royal physicians, on February 1, 1733, having candidly confessed that “all my life has been one ceaseless
sin,” the ruler of Saxony and Poland finally breathed his last.

After lying in state in the cathedral in Warsaw he was buried in Kraców but his heart was brought back to Dresden encased
in a metal casket and still lies in the crypt of the Catholic court church, the Hofkirche, built by his son. In Dresden some
say that when a pretty girl walks by the king's heart may still be heard to beat.

Augustus the Strong, potent demolisher of women's virtue, was succeeded by his son, Augustus III, a man who, though said to
be as physically powerful as his father, was as different in temperament, tastes and appearance as it was possible to imagine.

Since the lavish wedding celebrations of 1719 he had been contentedly married to Maria Josepha of Austria, by whom he had
fourteen children; the attractions of mistresses seemed to hold little allure for him. Nicholas Wraxall, a visitor to the
Dresden court, summed up prevailing opinions. The new king, he said, lacked “the activity, ambition, or address of his predecessor”;
he was “mild, indolent and destitute of energy.” Horace Walpole went further, waspishly describing the royal couple as “hideous
and malicious beyond belief or description.”

But the court of the new Augustus was not to be devoid of color—it would simply reflect quite different obsessions. Art, jewelry
and opera, not porcelain and pretty women, were the passions of the new king and, like his father, he was not afraid to spend
money on a grand scale to indulge them. He spent vast sums building up the royal collection of Dutch and Italian paintings,
creating what one visitor considered was “by far the finest collection in the north of Europe.” His most memorable acquisitions
were the Duke of Modena's celebrated collection; sundry masterpieces by Raphael, Rubens and Correggio, for which he paid a
princely 500,000 thalers; and the ravishing Sistine Madonna, a masterpiece by Raphael, which alone cost 20,000 thalers. Jewelry
was another mania. Augustus spent 200,000 thalers on the only natural green diamond ever discovered—and then had the sparkling
forty-one-carat stone mounted to wear on his hat.

Similarly outrageous sums were spent on the less enduring luxury of operatic spectacles. One of his musical extravaganzas
cost 100,000 thalers, more money, commented the notoriously parsimonious Prussian king, Frederick William I, than was spent
on feeding the entire court of Berlin for a year.

Busy indulging such pleasures, the cares of government were of little interest to Augustus III. He didn't share his father's
political ambition to ensure Saxon supremacy in Germany, and the reins of power were handed over as quickly as possible to
his favorites—and in particular to Count Heinrich von Brühl.

Porcelain also failed to captivate the new king. It was, he considered, an impressive adornment for gracing the banqueting
table or for presenting as royal gifts, but beyond that held little interest. To the new Augustus the factory at Meissen became
above all a means of earning revenue to pay for other luxuries and he was quite happy for others to take over its management.
So along with the responsibility for running the country, the charge of running the country's most profitable business was
speedily transferred to Count Brühl.

Brühl was an improvident politician—his foreign policy quickly cast Saxony into political turmoil—but his artistic tastes
in many ways closely echoed those of the late king. He loved expensive clothes and his sartorial finery became legendary throughout
Europe. A visitor to his palace recalled that he had “at least 300 different suits of clothes; each of these had a duplicate
as he always changed his clothes after dinner.” A painting of each suit, with the particular cane and snuff box belonging
to it, was “very accurately drawn in a large book, which was presented to his excellency every morning by his valet de chambre,
that he might fix upon the dress in which he wished to appear for the day.” Along with a mania for clothes, Brühl was possessed
by a passion for porcelain. Once he took over as director of Meissen he saw his way clear to indulge his craving—and the orders
for his palace began to pour in.

In deference to the memory of the late king, Augustus III and Brühl resolved that work on the still unfinished Japanese Palace
would continue—as long as the factory kept up the production of pieces for sale, and, of course, maintained a steady stream
of porcelain to the Brühl Palace.

For the next few years work on the fantasy palace dragged slowly on. Animals continued to be modeled by Kaendler and work
also began on another porcelain tour de force—the amazing glockenspiel, a dual-keyboard instrument in a limewood case elaborately
carved by Kaendler that played ranks of unglazed white porcelain bells. The finished instrument, assembled in 1737, miraculously
survived the bombing of Dresden and today can still be seen in the city's porcelain museum.

But eventually even Augustus's good intentions began to fade and progress drew to a halt. The Japanese Palace was destined
to remain an unfinished porcelain chimera. In the end most of its priceless contents were heaped up in the basement while
the building was used as a library. Today this monument to the excesses of Augustus the Strong somewhat incongruously houses
a museum of anthropology and prehistory; the chinoiserie-painted walls are whitewashed and kayaks and oceanic outriggers fill
the entrance hall. Only the bizarrely curved roof and the chuckling Chinese caryatids remain as a mocking but poignant memento
of Augustus's exotic aspirations.

As progress at the Japanese Palace drew to a halt, the commissions for Count Brühl continued to grow. Brühl, it turned out,
was a great admirer of the young Kaendler's work and enthusiastically encouraged his artistic development. The sculptor's
ascending reputation increasingly rankled with Herold, whose ideas were beginning to look rather old-fashioned. Herold, however,
had no intention of relinquishing his grip on design and realized that he needed urgently to reassert his authority, preferably
by obstructing Kaendler's progress.

He saw his first chance by interfering in the production of the massive porcelain animals. Despite Stölzel's best efforts
to modify the paste, the beasts were still peppered with firing flaws. Kaendler, however, was not too concerned, feeling that
the vigor of his modeling more than compensated for such imperfections. Knowing full well that Kaendler intended his figures
to remain white, as if carved from alabaster, Herold ordered his painters to fill the cracks with gypsum paste and paint them
in gaudily bright unfired colors.

Kaendler was outraged. The effect was tasteless and detracted from the figures' delicacy and realism. But his protests were
fruitless. Much to his annoyance, Herold, with the help of his allies on the commission, even managed to engineer royal support
for his intervention.

The incident marked the beginning of a festering hatred between the two leading figures in the factory. From now on they barely
spoke to one another and established entirely separate groups of friends and allies. As the tensions mounted the discrepancies
in their treatment of their own staff became increasingly apparent.

Unlike Herold, Kaendler was always happy to encourage his assistants to develop their own ideas and designs and to help them
overcome problems as their work became more ambitious. He made sure that all the apprentices, including Herold's, received
a proper training in drawing and were helped and encouraged to develop their own styles, even giving drawing lessons in his
own home, and offering a prize for the most promising pupil. He was not afraid, as Herold was, to employ well-trained assistants,
and several talented modelers blossomed under his direction.