New books: Frederik VIII’s Mansion

Following the restoration of Christian VII’s Mansion at Amalienborg a monumental two-volume work dealing with the mansion’s history, architecture and renovation was published. Now that the restoration of Frederik VIII’s Mansion is completed one has chosen a different and less scholarly approach, resulting in the book Frederik VIII’s Palæ – Restaurering. Ombygning. Kunstnerisk udsmykning, edited by a group consisting of Mads Falbe-Hansen, Carsten Kjær Sørensen, Dorte Bülow, Poul Schülein and Jens Bertelsen and published by Aristo Forlag. Apparently there is also a paperback version in English, titled Frederik VIII’s Palace [sic]: Restoration. Rebuilding. Artistic Decoration.
Following a foreword by Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary, Peter Elgaard in the first chapter deals with the Amalienborg complex and the Frederik Town, of which it is part. Amalienborg, at the very heart of the Frederik Town, ranks as one of the loveliest architectural complexes in Europe and Elgaard also briefly presents its architect, the renowned Nicolai Eigtved, and makes some interesting points about buildings Eigtved may have encountered on his travels and which could have inspired him in his work on Amalienborg.
Bente Scavenius considers the history of Frederik VIII’s Mansion and its interiors, while Poul Schülein and Jens Andrew Baumann offer an insight into the choices and priorities made during the restoration process. Berit Møller looks at the colours of the interiors, particularly the ceilings, observing that the architect Jørgen Hansen Koch, who redecorated it in neoclassical style in 1827-1828, was obviously familiar with and chose to follow Goethe’s colour theory.
Lin Rosa Spaabæk and Mette Thelle take a closer look at the room which Johan Laurentz Jensen decorated with floral paintings, while Jacob Fischer considers the garden. Poul Erik Tøjner writes about the contemporary art with which the mansion has been decorated and finally Mads Falbe-Hansen looks back at the restoration process of which he was in charge.
Although one managed to keep the cost within the budget, much turned out differently from what was originally planned. The installation of the new artistic scheme was only suggested two years into the process and Falbe-Hansen also makes the point that it was only while the work was in progress that they realised the significance of the building they were working on.
Its empire-style interiors were created by Jørgen Hansen Koch at the same time as C. F. Hansen, now considered the greatest of Danish neoclassical architects, was working on the second Christiansborg Palace. Except for the Palace Church, the second Christiansborg was lost in the great fire of 1884, thus leaving Frederik VIII’s Mansion as the prime example of empire-style royal interiors.
When the project group realised this and that the mansion thus includes some of the most significant and comprehensive empire style interiors in Northern Europe it was easy to decide what should be at the heart of the restoration project: to recreate the mansion’s original clear floor-plan to the extent it was possible and practical, to preserve and strengthen the empire style interiors and to highlight modern forms where modern elements were added.
The chapters are all rather short and thus each of them offers more of a glimpse into the topic than a thorough treatment of it. Yet taken together, the chapters give a good overview of the mansion and the restoration process.
The publisher stresses that this is “the official book” on the process and occasionally parts of it read as celebratory speeches in which the various people involved thank each other profusely for the cooperation. And unlike Kirsten Lindborg in her 2005 book on the mansion, everyone is careful not to utter a critical word about the damage done to the building during the stewardship of King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid.
The book’s great strength is the illustrations and there are indeed more illustrations than texts. There are page after page of excellent photos of the sun-bathed interiors (without furniture, as they were seen by 479,246 visitors during the public opening before the crown princely family moved in), the exterior and the garden. Robert Fortuna has taken most of the photos of the work in progress and the interiors, while Torben Eskerod has shot the completed artworks.
But it must be said that the book would have benefited from better proof-reading. There are many references to Christian VII’s Mansion, yet it is almost habitually called Christian VIII’s Mansion, which is another building. Also Frederik VII himself is sometimes called Frederik VIII. And we are even told that the mansion is located at the King’s New Square rather than Amalienborg Square!
The throne which was used by Frederik VI’s daughter, Princess Vilhelmine, in Frederik VIII’s Mansion during her marriage to Prince Frederik Carl Christian (the future Frederik VII) had originally been made for her sister Caroline with her intended marriage to her uncle Prince Christian of Hesse-Cassel in mind – here they all get mixed up and the throne is said to have been made for “Prince Frederik Carl Christian of Hesse-Cassel and Princess Vilhelmine”.
Christian VIII was never Crown Prince, nor was the current Queen ever Crown Princess. And if King Frederik VIII and Queen Louise married in 1869 on page 106, how can they celebrate their silver wedding in 1898 on page 107? There are also more than one example of illustrations not showing what the captions claim they do show. In a production like this such sloppiness ought to have been avoided.

Danish crown princely couple takes over mansion

At 2 p.m. today the Danish Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen will, on behalf of the Palaces and Properties Agency, formally hand over Frederik VIII’s Mansion at Amalienborg to Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary.
The mansion has been uninhabited since Queen Ingrid moved permanently to Fredensborg in 1997 and has since 2004 undergone extensive restoration and renovation work. From the end of February until it closed in early August, 479,246 people have taken the opportunity to visit the mansion and see the contemporary artworks with which it has been decorated.
Frederik VIII’s Mansion will be the official residence of the crown princely couple, also after their future accession to the Danish throne, but from remarks made by Crown Prince Frederik at the time his wife’s pregnancy with twins was announced I understand that, as for now, they will continue to live mostly at the Chancellery House at Fredensborg, where they have had their home since they married in 2004 and where the children attend a local kindergarten.

What to see: Louis De Geer’s Mansion, Stockholm

If the gate in the wall at Götgatan 16 at Söder is open, one will be able to see Louis De Geer’s Mansion, one of Stockholm’s hidden treasures.
It is the earliest building in Dutch Palladianism to be found in Sweden, a style which would eventually leave deep marks on Swedish architecture. The mansion was built between 1646 and 1651, probably after designs by a master bricklayer named Jurgen Gesewitz, who worked for Louis De Geer.
De Geer was born in Liège in what is now Belgium and his family was, like my own ancestors, among the many Walloons who immigrated to Sweden to work in the iron industry following the Dutch-Swedish friendship pact of 1614.
De Geer came to Sweden already in 1615 and soon acquired rich estates. He settled in Stockholm in 1642, where work on the mansion started four years later. Two branches of the family have later been ennobled and the De Geers have produced two Swedish prime ministers. In 1914 Baroness Marianne De Geer af Leufsta married into the Bernadotte family when she became the daughter-in-law of Prince Oscar Bernadotte – her niece Gunnila is the second wife of the former Prince Carl Johan.
Two years after Louis De Geer’s death in 1653 his mansion was bought by Ebba Brahe, the great love of Gustaf II Adolf’s youth and mother of Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, who rose to be one of the leading figures in the reign of Queen Christina. The arms of Ebba Brahe and her husband Jacob De la Gardie can be seen above the gate to the courtyard.
In the 18th century the mansion was turned into apartments. It was restored in the 1960s and these days this Dutch mansion serves, very appropriately, as the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Lost treasures: Bonde Mansion, Stockholm

Bonde Mansion at Rosenbad was, at least seen from the outside, one of the grandest patrician mansions in Stockholm. Situated at Strömgatan, overlooking the water (second photo), it would lead one’s thoughts towards St Petersburg and the Russian neoclassicism.
It was built on the orders of Count Carl Bonde, Marshal of the Realm, who himself made a rough sketch of his own ideas for his new town residence after the older, 17th-century Bonde Mansion had been sold to the city of Stockholm to serve as court house. The new mansion did, however, turn out quite differently from the Count’s sketch. Work began in 1789, but war and financial restraints meant that it was not completed until 1798, by which time Count Bonde had been dead for seven years.
The name of the architect is disputed. It is mostly attributed to the architect Erik Palmstedt (1741-1803), but the master bricklayer Johan Henrik Walmstedt later claimed authorship of the drawings. A member of the Bonde family itself has attributed it to Palmstedt, whose son also included it in his list of his father’s works.
It was a long, rectangular three-storey building with a rather simple façade. What made it stand out was its impressive temple front, which rose to a fourth storey with a triangular pediment carried by six columns of the Ionic order.
The problem when building Bonde Mansion was to adapt it to the adjacent Hildebrand House. To give it a unified façade towards the water and create the appearance that the palace covered the entire block, one side of Hildebrand House was incorporated into the mansion’s main façade (as seen clearly in photos 1 and 2). This meant that the mansion’s columned portico was placed in the middle of the block, but actually well to the left of the mansion’s actual centre. Another problem was that Hildebrand House was one storey higher, something the architect tried to hide by a mansard roof. It has been speculated that there might have been financial reasons for this and that one had hoped to be able to add another storey to Bonde Mansion when it could be afforded.
Bonde Mansion in many ways resembled Giacomo Quarenghi’s Ekaterina Institute in St Petersburg, which had a rather similar location by the Fontanka and a very similar façade with a raised centre section. However, this cannot have inspired the Bonde Mansion’s architect as the Ekaterina Institute was built only in 1804-1807.
Sadly Bonde Mansion had been badly built and with the passing of the years it started to sink, which led to cracks all over, a situation which was made worse when buildings nearby were demolished at the end of the 19th century. In the end Count Carl Carlsson Bonde received an offer he could not refuse from the Nordic Credit Bank, which bought the mansion and had it demolished in 1899. In its place came Ferdinand Boberg’s art-nouveau building Rosenbad (second photo), a complex which included a restaurant, a hotel and offices and today serves as Sweden’s main government building and seat of the Prime Minister. On its corner Strömgatan/Drottninggatan there is a stone relief by Joseph Anton Schmid depicting Bonde Mansion in a somewhat idealised manner (first photo). A photo of what it really looked like may be found at www.stockholmskallan.se (external link).