Johann Caspar Lavater in his study. Painting by Antonio Orazio Moretto, around 1798.
Swiss National Museum

HUNTING FOR STAINED GLASS PLATES

At the end of August, Leopold III had to abruptly cut short his stay in Switzerland and return to Dessau. Princess Louise rented a spacious country house in Hottingen and spent the autumn in Zurich. Her husband came back in mid-October. Accompanied by Lavater, the royal family travelled over the Albis Pass to Lucerne. They attempted ‘to buy some painted plates in a place called Knonau, but the people to whom they belonged asked too much’.

The next morning the party of tourists boarded a ship that took them to the Tell monument on the little isle of Altstadt near Meggenhorn in Lake Lucerne and to the Rütli meadow. On the Rütli they picked ivy, ‘which surrounded the stones of this spring notable for its association with freedom’, as a souvenir. The royal couple’s stay in Zurich came to an end on 3 November 1783 and they returned to Dessau via Karlsruhe. A few days after their departure, Lavater wrote to them: ‘Hello, my dear ones, never far away!… yesterday the chest was closed and dispatched.’ Lavater neglected to go into detail about the contents of the box. As we now know, during his stay in Switzerland the German prince had amassed a collection of more than 100 historic stained glass plates dating from the early 16th to the late 17th century. With Lavater’s assistance, he was able to get hold of selected plates and buy them, often at a high price. Among the most beautiful pieces are the complete series of the standard-bearer plates (Bannerträgerscheiben) and the round panes depicting the swearing of the Rütli oath from the old Schützenhaus am Platz in Zurich, the creed sequence from the church at Maur on the Greifensee, and the capital Rütli oath plate from the Wirtshaus zum Adler in Knonau.

Mylène Ruoss

Prince Franz’s shopping spree