Philipp Hainhofer - Art Agent and Diplomatic Actor of the Early Modern Period

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The art agent Philipp Hainhofer (1578-1647) is one of the most important figures in the politics of art and collections in the first half of the 17th century north of the Alps. He not only planned, commissioned and brokered highly artificial objects for curiosity cabinets, but he also advised collectors and documented art collections he visited in his travelogues. As an Augsburg entrepreneur, he acted at the point of intersection of a significant art-political exchange of ideas and goods, the result of which is reflected - if one disregards the art objects themselves - in the above-mentioned travelogues and in his vast archive of correspondence (containing business correspondence, correspondence with princely commissioners about politics and art), which is comprehensively preserved, for the most part in the Herzog August library in Wolfenbüttel. Since November 2011, these documents have been the focus of research within a DFG-funded project, and a monograph on Philipp Hainhofer is currently being written. The new methodological approach in this study based on Hainhofer as its central figure concentrates on a synthetic approach to the research that has up to now been undertaken separately within various scientific disciplines. It, therefore, unites aspects from the fields of art history (collection history, history of applied arts and their functions), history of communication (information networks in 1600: correspondence and manuscripts), political history (including diplomacy and ambassadors) and literature (travel literature and culture of correspondence) showing up their mutual interdependence. The proposed second funding period of 12 months is used, as provided in the initial proposal, for drafting two chapters and for the overall revision and preparation for printing.