There was certainly no other woman in the early 19th century, who so carefully observed and promoted the artistic careers of important painters and sculptors the way Caroline von Humboldt (1766–1829) did. Her insatiable curiosity about new developments in art, her untiring willingness to support previously undiscovered talents through studio visits and purchases, as well as a genuine connoisseurship that recognized quality, have allowed her to go down in history as one of the most important patrons of her times. The wife of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Caroline wielded enormous influence on contemporaneous German art, as she cleverly promoted both Neoclassical artists and the young protagonists of the Romantic School.
This exquisite volume, whose words and images are designed with book lovers in mind, traces how Caroline used her residences in Paris, Rome, and above all at Berlin’s Schloss Tegel, to encourage societal exchange, how her personal correspondence pointedly documented the particularities of works and current trends in art, and consequently how she influenced the cultural landscape around her.