3. Niccolò Salvi (finished by Niccolò Pannini),
Trevi Fountain,

1732-1762. Marble. Piazza di Trevi, Rome.

 

 

The German imperial crown hardly played a legal role; it only possessed a more or less representative function gladly carried out by the House of Habsburg. In Austria the Habsburgs had occupied the area of Krain (current Slovenia), Kärnten (Carinthia) and Tyrol and, after long internal strife from the end of the fifteenth century into the 1690s, combined them into a single state to withstand the onslaught of the Ottomans. It was only the famous Prince Eugene of Savoy who succeeded in defeating the “Turks” at the battle of Zenta in 1697. This victory was memorialized by Ferdinand Freiligrath in a poem later set to music by Johann Gottfried Loewe: “Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter, / hei das klingt wie Ungewitter / Weit ins Türkenlager hin. …”

From a historical point of view, the seventeenth century began with the end of the glorious reign of the English Queen Elizabeth I and the civil wars in France by Henry IV. In Italian art, Caravaggio created a new style; in Spain, Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote; and in England, Shakespeare became world-famous with his dramas.

The Thirty Years’ War raged in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and laid waste to half of Europe. Among the decisive personalities in this war were the Swedish King Gustav II, who fell during the war, and the most important army leader, Albrecht von Wallenstein, who was murdered in 1694 in Eger. Cardinal Richelieu, under Louis XIII, secured the supremacy of France in Europe, and Oliver Cromwell ruled the Republic in England. In Flanders, Rubens and Rembrandt were making their marks on the art world, in France Molière wrote his comedies, and in Italy Bernini defined new paths in sculpture and architecture. It was a very eventful and turbulent century.