Caroline Louise, Margravine of Baden (1723−1783), who had married Charles Frederick, Margrave of Baden-Durlach in 1751, was a prominent European collector. She made the young royal seat of Karlsruhe into a place of lively intellectual exchange through her international network of correspondents. Her collecting was distinguished by her enlightened esprit, love of art and skillful handling within the French, Dutch and German art markets. The presentation of the margravine's own Mahlerey Cabinet, containing more than 200 paintings, is at the heart of a "large country exhibition." Caroline Louise was fond of Dutch masters of the Golden Age and the art of her contemporaries in France. She was able to acquire important works by Teniers, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Dou, Boucher, Vernet and Chardin. Her development from an amateur collector into a respected connoisseur is also traced. As her own skillful pastels and drawings indicate, she
also achieved a high artistic level as a pupil of Liotard. The accompanying collection of essays contains 20 scholarly contributions by renowned authors that were presented at a conference in Karlsruhe in 2014.