In front of the fireplace of Schinkels Pomona Temple is a steel sculpture with four changing faces, the antique Polyhymnia often found in Potsdam, to which I have dedicated a separate article.
The niches offer space for a pair of vases. From KPM Berlin I received a pair of 60 cm high vases designed by Enzo Mari. The slightly conical vases will be screwed together with minimalist feet when they are finished, before that I could work on them more easily. To capture vase painting in my technique in a contemporary way was an exciting challenge. I related to the site.
When Karl Friedrich Schinkel designed this little temple in 1800, he was just 19 years old. He is a student at the newly founded Berlin Bauakademie. He is in charge of the building commissions of his deceased friend and teacher Friedrich Gilly. As nice as this reads, it must have been a bad year for him: in March he lost his mother, and in the summer Friedrich Gilly, whom he admired, died at only 27. Gilly was a pioneer of what was then called the “Greek style” in Berlin, which inspired Schinkel. The “private society” of architects, to which Schinkel was also allowed to submit his designs for discussion, met in the Gilly house. Here, after the long “Friederizian Rococo”, what would later be called Classicism was developed. “Spreeathen”. Gilly knew the new French architects; they were guided by the three magnificent volumes “The Antiques of Athens” by Stuart and Revett. Schinkel must have fallen in love right on the first pages: his first work resembles a view of the Erechtheion. He was also working on designs for vessels at the time of the Pomona Temple design – “the simplest form with little decoration, the model for which has been brought to light above all by the new archaeological excavations”.
I think that’s how he would have liked it.
The painting “King, Emperor and Icon” shows the historical figures who set the tone here, the Pfingstberg namesake Luise and her sons.
Frederick William IV developed the layout inspired by his trip to Italy. The little boy in the middle, in contrast to his more talented relatives, reached a healthy old age, Kaiser Wilhelm I. In the antique gold frame, the picture looks like an academic glaze painting, but was actually created using the airbush technique.
