Die Metastasier

On the eve of a long and bloody war, a new, lower-powered generation came to the fore. They had studied in Italy, in Strasbourg, or in Leipzig, read Voltaire and, later on, Rousseau. While their parents still wore black gowns and dusty wigs and defined themselves by their titles and offices, these sensitive young men picked up strange hobby-horses and loved, before all, music and theatre. Their whims and fancies are best remembered in a series of portrait paintings, made by the Italian itinerant painter Gennaro Basile, whose cheerful artworks are spread over Bratislava, Salzburg, Graz, Prague and Brünn. In his paintings, Basile presents his sitters in some of the strangest attitudes ever taken in the long history of portrait painting. His highly remarkable series of portraits was commissioned by a Count Purgstall, about whom the famous Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni said: 'Il vostro palazzo é l'ospizio frequentissimo de' personaggi più illustri, de principi più rinomati, de' generali piu valorosi, che di là passano, i quali trovando in Voi, oltre la più generosa ospitalità, un erudità, amena e coltissima conversazione, facevano delizia loro il conoscervi e l'ammirarvi. Your stately home is a hospitable place haunted by famous personalities, illustrious princes and valiant commanders. These found in you not only a generous mind, but also great learning, and gay and most cultivated conversation, which was a delight for all who made your acquaintance and left you with admiration. Later, the portrait-gallery came into the possession of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, the founder of the Austrian Academy of Science. The Friends of Metastasio is a book on eighteenth-century portrait rooms and portrait series. Images of friends, contemporaries, and peers break open the genealogical array of the traditional family or the dynasty, and show the associational powers of portrait painting at work.