Original scientific paper
Baroque Anamorphosis in the Architecture of Prince Eugene of Savoy’s Castle in Bilje
Zlatko Uzelac
; Institut za povijest umjetnosti, Zagreb
Abstract
The estate of Belje/Bellye, given to Prince Eugene of Savoy as a reward for the victory in the Battle of Zenta, was the largest among his lands. Its administrative seat was situated at the closest location to the fort of Osijek, in Bilje, constructed due to the Hungarian uprising in 1707–1712 in the form of a Baroque bastion fortress. However, the general architectural disposition of this complex was rather unusual and typologically unique considering its function as the seat of a manorial estate. It appears to have been constructed as a temporary seat of the future operational headquarters of the head imperial military commander and his entourage in the planned final combat with the Ottoman Empire, a sort of Baroque »praetorium« or an ideally improved
version of his headquarters in the castle of Ostiano. Prince Eugene used the castle precisely for that purpose for two years in a row during his last great war in 1716–1717. After the city palace in Vienna and the castle of Ráckeve, it was only his third building. Despite being the largest at the time, its residential core was constructed in the shape of a rectangle formed by narrow single-storey wings, with only the central part of the southern wing elevated and crowned by an entrance tower topped by an unusually large onion dome. The castle’s rectangle measuring 30 × 30 Klafter (fathom) corresponds to the project square of the Ráckeve castle (where the square is doubled). The authorship of Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, by that time working exclusively for Prince Eugene of Savoy, is visible above all in the simplicity and functionality of architectural design. Hildebrandt’s distinct ease of invention is discernible in the process of doubling the form out of its centre that resulted in a perceptive transformation of the square to a dynamic Baroque ellipse, with unusual spatial doubling of the entrance portals that determine the central point of perception.
Keywords
Belje/Bellye; Baranya; Baroque castle; Baroque fortress; Prince Eugene of Savoy; Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt; anamorphosis
Hrčak ID:
136371
URI
Publication date:
17.3.2015.
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