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Rudolf von Eitelberger

Rudolf von Eitelberger was the first Professor for Art History at the University of Vienna and the founder of the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (today’s MAK). After visiting the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and witnessing the construction of the South Kensington Museum (today Victoria and Albert Museum), Eitelberger was inspired by the idea that Vienna, as the capital city of the great Habsburg empire, absolutely also had to have a museum dedicated to the arts and crafts. One of course wished to remain competitive, stimulate industrial production, and differentiate oneself from the emergent new power of the German Empire with one’s own language of form.

It would take a few years until Eitelberger and his board of trustees were able to realize their vision, and a few more years until the building on the Stubenring opened its doors.

The museum had already been founded in 1863 as an exemplary collection, but a provisional solution at the Ballhausplatz would precede the building on the Ringstraße until its completion.

The following was found in the Morgen-Post of 4 November 1871:

“Mr. von Eitelberger was met at the highest levels with goodwill but no money for execution. Given the sad state of the finances of the Austrian monarchy, it would have been virtually impossible to found a museum, if the professor had not had a felicitous idea. He took the art treasures where he found them, to wit ‘on loan,’ as he claimed, but in reality, never to be returned—in most cases at least. Nothing great has ever come about without pilferage, the resourceful professor must have said to himself, and he now plundered indiscriminately: from the art treasures of the imperial court, the nobility, the clergy, from all art lovers of the monarchy.”

Heinrich von Ferstel

The architect Heinrich von Ferstel, born in 1828 in Vienna, was one of the most exceptional representatives of Historicism. At the age of only 27, he designed the Votive Church near the Ringstraße and achieved early honors and recognition as a result.

The former parade ground of the Franz-Josephs-Kaserne (barracks) was endowed as the building plot for the present-day MAK and work commenced in 1868.

With the new museum building, which was completed in 1871, Ferstel also primarily succeeded, in addition to the special architectural ground plan and state-of-the-art technical execution, in creating an artistic masterpiece.

The exterior façade was designed with a combination of bricks and sandstone. The two major museum additions also subsequently oriented themselves to this combination of building materials: the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts in 1877 and the expansion into the Weiskirchnerstraße designed by architect Ludwig Baumann in 1909.

The bricks for the building came from the largest brickyards of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which were located near Inzersdorf am Wienerberg. The sandstone originated from two quarries: one of these was in St. Margarethen in Burgenland, the other in the somewhat closer Wöllersdorf in Lower Austria.

A double-glass roof is found around 23 meters above the floor. This complex construction of iron and glass, at that time the most modern of architectural accomplishments for train stations, factory buildings and such, was planned for natural lighting. The original glass plates were probably painted or ground, as can be seen in some images of the time.

Advantages of this design are still, even today, the open courtyard situation and the daylight that lends the colored design of the hall even more warmth. The building was meant to communicate an important message and the intention of the founding of the museum—the deliberate linking of old and new.

Although there were already many brick buildings in Vienna around 1860, the façade, kept in the style of the Florentine Renaissance, surprised with several new elements: especially worthy of note here is the so-called sgraffito decoration. As already revealed by the Italian verb “sgraffiare,” a scratching technique that was new in Vienna at the time.

An ornamental sgraffito band with reliefs of glazed clay, designed by Ferdinand Laufberger, who held a professorship at the school of arts and crafts, extends above the row of windows of the ground floor. Depicted are the names and portraits of well-known artists like Albrecht Dürer, Jost Amman, Veit Stoss, or Michelangelo.

The technique of artfully designed mortar cuts first became popular with the construction of the museum and was subsequently also applied to other buildings.

Relating to this, the following is found in the founding statutes:

“The tendency toward enlivening and elevating artistic industrial activity embodied in the museum building justifies the use of such technical means for architectural decoration as served centuries ago to decorate architectural creations that are still admired today, [...] for the revitalization of past techniques.”

The 32 columns of the MAK Columned Main Hall have a structural function, which is why a material able to bear a load had to be used—these are monoliths of Mauthausen granite. Untersberg marble was chosen for the capitals, bases, and balusters. The wall design was executed in the old Roman technique of stucco lustro (polished plaster), a painted imitation of marble.

The column courtyard was a complete innovation in the architecture of Vienna, though not in art history. The arcade courts of Italy and especially those of the Italian palaces doubtlessly inspired our master builders. However, Ferstel had to close the courtyard, which was also meant to serve as an exhibition area. He thus placed the glass roof in an iron framework above the expansive room.

“No one will be able to resist the mighty impression of this high, open, airy and colorful hall […],”

is found written in the Mittheilungen des k. k. Österreichischen Museums für Kunst und Industrie from 1871, as well as the following:

“[…] The floor is a geometric pattern in mosaic-like asphalt. The colorful impression is concentrated on the main stairs, which immediately capture the attention of those climbing the lower steps in the vestibule.

(from the Mittheilungen des k. k. Österreichischen Museums für Kunst und Industrie 1871, issue 74, p. 498)

Ferdinand Laufberger

The ceiling in the stairwell also displays frescoes by Ferdinand Laufberger. At the center of the representation is the goddess of beauty alighting from the sea. She personifies the mission of the museum and floats above everything.

The goddess, in keeping with the content of the museum, is surrounded by allegorical representations of Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, and Arts and Crafts.

Laufberger designed and executed all representational paintings in the stairwell. Pietro Isella created all ornamental paintings in the Columned Main Hall and in the stairwell. Represented are motifs of grotesque painting, especially of fantasy creatures, which are all arranged strictly symmetrically here. The designation “grotesque painting” derives from the Italian word “grotta,” or cave.

During the Renaissance, a palace complex of Emperor Nero was found in Rome during excavations, with imaginative and eccentric representations of human beings, animals, and plants.

This genre was given the name “Grotesque,” referring to the subterranean site of the find—le grotte di Nero. As a result of colloquial disassociations, however, this type of painting is now often understood in the literal sense as “grotesque,” as an exaggeration and alienation of reality.