Frankfurt was a center of art trade and production in the late eighteenth century. Like everywhere else in Germany, artists and collectors were still enthusiastic about the art of the Netherlands in the age of Rembrandt. But Frankfurt had a unique selling point: it was the only place where the genre of church interiors flourished again – an extraordinary retro fashion. Between 1770 and 1820, between two and three hundred fantasy churches and dozens of portraits of Frankfurt churches were created – paintings and executed drawings that were soon traded throughout Europe.

The exhibition Raumwunder. Frankfurter Künstler entdecken das Kircheninterieur (1750-1850) at the Dommuseum Frankfurt is the first exhibition to be devoted to this unique phenomenon, presenting its entire spectrum through numerous works by the two main representatives of this painting genre, Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern (1738-1819) and Christian Stöcklin (1741-1795), as well as their predecessors and colleagues. Morgenstern’s oeuvre, in particular, is well documented by the catalogues of works and copies of paintings he kept. They provide a fascinating insight into the artist’s workshop practice, the mechanisms of the art market, and the preferences of painting collectors. What they all have in common is a fascination with the virtuoso construction of space in perspective.

For the first time, the paintings in Frankfurt’s churches are also examined for their source value, i.e., their reliability with regard to interior design, decoration, and liturgical use in the age of secularization. The focus is on the period of upheaval between the Enlightenment and Romanticism: the preference of bourgeois collections for paintings based on the Dutch model led to the romantic exaggeration of Gothic church ruins and cathedrals.

The exhibition is curated by Dr. Wolfgang Cillessen, curator at the Historisches Museum Frankfurt, Dr. Almut Pollmer-Schmidt and Dr. Gerhard Kölsch, as well as conservator Anja Damaschke (HMF). The Städel Museum, the Goethehaus (Dr. Mareike Hennig), and the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt are also involved as major lenders. The project is the result of many years of continuous research by Dr. Wolfgang Cillessen. The exhibition design is in the hands of Sounds of Silence (Petra Eichler and Susanne Kessler). The exhibition will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue published by Schnell und Steiner (Regensburg) with contributions by Prof. Jürgen Bärsch, Dr. Hildegard Lütkenhaus, Prof. Bernward Schmidt, Prof. Michael Thimann and others.