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149 When the French humanist Michel de Montaigne visited Augsburg in 1580, he noted in his diary: “The Fuggers, of whom there are several lines, all of them very rich, take up the most important social positions within the city. We were permitted to see two rooms in their palace: one of them large, high, and with marble floors, the other one low and filled with old and modern medallions, with a small cabinet in the back. These are the most magnificent rooms I have ever seen.” He was also impressed by the family’s summer houses and gardens: “With their extravagant splendor they contribute towards the further embellishment of the city, which is grateful to them for it.”1 Montaigne’s was no isolated case: Visits to the Fugger houses and gardens were part of the standard program of high-ranking travelers who came to the imperial city in the sixteenth century. Apart from their wealth and economic strength, the Fuggers aroused their contemporaries’ interest mainly by their patronage and lifestyle.2 Although the family also had numerous castles in the countryside (either remodeled or newly built and lavishly decorated), it mainly used the imperial city as a stage on which to display itself.3 Aside from the Fuggers’ economic activities, researchers have paid most attention to their patronage of the arts. Norbert Lieb devoted several volumes to this topic, and Paul Lehmann wrote a two-volume history of the Fugger libraries. Historical exhibitions have repeatedly brought the Fuggers’ role as collectors, patrons, and promoters of the arts to the attention of an interested public. In 1950, an exhibition entitled “Fugger and Welser” in Augsburg , which still bore the marks of wartime destruction at the time, invited visitors to revel in the imperial city’s glorious past. Three decades later, the city’s cultural heyday from the Renaissance to the early Baroque was exhibited under the title “World in Transition,” and in 1993, the five-hundredth anniversary of Anton Fugger’s birth was acknowledged with the exhibition “The Fuggers and Music.”4 6 patronage and self-display g 150 | The Fuggers of Augsburg The results of these investigations into the history of art, music, and libraries cannot be displayed exhaustively here. Instead, the following account focuses on six central areas: the Fugger houses as centers of urban representation ; the burial chapel at St. Anna as a major work of the early Renaissance in southern Germany and focal point of the family’s memory; the social settlement of the Fuggerei as an architectural monument to Jakob Fugger’s charitable activities; the patronage of painters and musicians, as exemplified by Christoph Amberger and Melchior Neusidler; the family’s collections of books; and the Fuggers’ Book of Honors as a medium of family identity and tradition. Throughout, the visual arts, architecture, music, and extensive collections of books should not be viewed in isolation from the family’s economic activities. In accordance with recent scholarship, the manifold interconnections, interdependencies, and processes of “osmosis” between economy and art require particular attention.5 the fugger houses in augsburg At the beginning of the sixteenth century, members of the Fugger family already owned substantial houses in Augsburg—at the Judenberg (the old Jewish quarter), on the Rindermarkt (cattle market), and in the Kleesattlergasse . By midcentury, these estates had been extended and redecorated according to their occupants’ tastes and needs for self-representation.6 After his wedding to Sibylla Artzt in 1498, Jakob Fugger moved into his motherin -law’s house fronting the Weinmarkt (wine market) and purchased it, along with a neighboring house, in 1511. By 1515, he had had the estates remodeled and joined together into one representative city palace, turning the Weinmarkt , which was centrally located on the old imperial road (the presentday Maximilianstraße) into the firm’s headquarters and the center of most family members’ lives. In 1523, Jakob Fugger also bought the adjacent house of Georg Kunigsperger and his wife, Regina Artzt. His nephews added to this estate, which eventually made up almost an entire city block, and Anton Fugger continued to remodel the houses on the Weinmarkt. The palace-like complex finally included three interior courts, among which the Damenhof (Ladies’ Court) with its arcades shows the conspicuous influence of the Italian Renaissance. The frescoes embellishing the Ladies’ Court were devoted to the heroic deeds of Maximilian I, thereby emphasizing the Fugger family’s loyalty to the emperor. The façade fronting the Weinmarkt, which is almost seventy-five yards...

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