Stuart Moss (UCL) - 2023-24 Students
stuart.moss.23@ucl.ac.uk

Removed and Recontextualized: Monastic Art in the Bavarian Säkularisation of 1803

My project investigates the circumstances and consequences of the removal of large numbers of artworks during the dissolution of Bavarian monasteries in 1803. Tracing their histories, I ask how these objects changed as they were taken from dynamic monastic visual cultures of the eighteenth century into the supposedly completely secular public sphere of the nineteenth century. Using archival records documenting their dispersal to reconstruct these lost collections, my research will show the vital role they played in shaping institutions central to the development of art history as a discipline, including the art market and the public art museum.

In 1803 the small German state of Bavaria was reeling from the military defeats and territorial losses incurred during conflicts with Napoleonic France. The Bavarian government sought to replenish its coffers by means of an process known as the ‘Säkularisation’, the seizing of the property of the ancient monasteries in its territory, many of which could look back on more than six hundred years of history. Vast numbers of silver and gold artefacts, jewels, paintings and prints seized from them were sold at auction, thereby sending previously ecclesiastical possessions into private and public art collections in Germany and abroad, where they remain to this day. Using inventories and documents from the Bavarian State Archives, I investigate this event of secularisation for the unique insight it gives us both about the function of art within the monastic collections of the eighteenth century, and the ways in which those functions changed as artworks moved onto the nascent art market and into non-sacred contexts.

Primary supervisor: Dr Allison Stielau

Secondary supervisor: Dr Richard Taws

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