RKD STUDIES

Princess Marianne of the Netherlands (1810-1883), daughter of King William I (1772-1843), was one of the most influential figures in Kleyn’s Roman career [8]. After separating from her husband Prince Albrecht of Prussia (1809-1872), she settled in Rome and cultivated a strikingly independent and cosmopolitan lifestyle. Her villa on the Via del Corso was both a residence and a cultural centre, filled with paintings and sculptures that gradually took the form of a private museum. Unlike many aristocrats who restricted themselves to fashionable commissions, Marianne was deeply engaged with the city’s artistic and intellectual life. She bought Old Masters, supported living artists, and commissioned ambitious new works that reflected her own interests and convictions.¹ It was within this context that Kleyn found one of his most prestigious patrons. By the mid-1850s he had already painted portraits for local nobility, but Marianne’s support brought him into a different league. For her he produced several large biblical compositions, including Rebecca at the Well, Christ and the Samaritan Woman and Hagar and Ishmael.²

Marianne’s role as a patron changed in 1856, when she sold her Roman villa and moved to Schloss Reinhartshausen in Erbach, near Frankfurt. There she created one of the earliest private museums in Germany, transforming the castle into a semi-public institution. Her aim was twofold: to make her collection accessible to visitors and to shape the castle into a lasting monument of her independence and cultural ambition.³ Kleyn remained in Rome for another decade, but his connection with Marianne endured. In 1873 he was officially appointed her court painter and curator of the Reinhartshausen museum, a position that secured his livelihood and brought him, together with his family, to Germany.⁴

It was in this new role that Kleyn’s engagement with photography deepened. The princess authorized him to photograph her collection of paintings and sculptures for a catalogue of the museum.⁵ Published in 1878, the volume listed thirty-five paintings and five sculptures, each accompanied by detailed descriptions and twenty photographic plates of key works [9], along with a view of the museum’s interior [10]. These photographs, attributed to Kleyn, represent an early and systematic use of photography in a museological context. They served a double purpose: they documented Marianne’s collection, and they helped to publicise her museum among a wider audience.

Some of the photographs even found a second life as postcards, sold to visitors at Reinhartshausen. In this way the collection reached far beyond the castle walls, circulating both as a museum display and as a souvenir. These photographs were not exercises in study, as Kleyn’s earlier copies in Florence had been, but instruments with a clear purpose: to record, to promote and, in part, to commercialise the collection. They reflect a broader nineteenth-century development in which photography extended the reach of art and made it accessible to wider audiences.

8
Herman Antonie de Bloeme
Portrait of Marianne van Oranje-Nassau (1810-1883), dated 1860
Gotha, Schlossmuseum Schloss Friedenstein Gotha, inv./cat.nr. SG 1100

9
Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn (attributed to),
Photographing Objets d’Art, ca. 1870-1900,
glass negative, 180 x 130 mm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-D-OO-1131-26

10
Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn (attributed to),
Interior of Museum Reinhartshausen, ca. 1870-1900,
glass negative, 150 x 176 mm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-D-OO-1131-153