#algarotti

[enlitment]

Meme so dumb that I had to make immediately (Based on this poem btw. For the uninitiated.)

[saintjustienne]

Saw the tomb of Algarotti in Pisa and cried.

In one of his letters to Frederick he wrote "my name will live alongside that of Your Majesty" and in a way that's what actually happened.

This detail never fails to make me emotional.

[amphibious-thing]

"In March 1736, at the same time as Ste was married, there arrived in London a twenty-four-year-old Italian scholar named Francesco Algarotti, who bore a fond letter of introduction from Hervey's old friend Voltaire. Algarotti, apart from being intelligent and charming (in the words of Thomas Carlyle, he 'had powers of pleasing and used them'), was dazzlingly good-looking, with wavy raven hair swept back from his brow and coal-black eyes: a swarthy stereotype. He had an irresistible effect on almost everyone he met (especially men with homosexual tendencies). People threw themselves at him, strove to beguile him. Voltaire called Algarotti his 'cher cygne de Padue', Frederick the Great begged him to come and live at the Prussian court; it was almost inevitable that Hervey, too, should fall under his spell."

~ Lucy Moore, Amphibious Thing p242

[gogmstuff]

1730s Close out, for a while (from top to bottom) -

ca. 1735 Elisabetta Algarotti Dandolo by Rosalba Carriera (location ?). From pinterest.com/source/karoline-von-manderscheid.tumblr.com/ 1034X1341.

ca. 1735 Probably Maria Clementina Sobieska by Pier Leone (Muzeum Pałacu Króla Jana III w Wilanowie - Warszawa, Poland). From Google Art Project via Wikimedia; fixed spots w Pshop 2251X3000.

ca. 1735/1740 Lady Mary Bellings-Arundell, Baroness Arundell of Wardour (1716–1769) by Enoch Seeman the Younger (Oxburgh Hall - Oxburgh, near Swffham, Norfolk, UK). From Wikimedia 943X1200.

ca. 1737 Maria Josepha of Austria by Louis de Silvestre (Stadtgeschichtliches Museum - Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany) From Google Art Project via liveinternet.ru/users/marylai/post292168318/ 2345X300.

ca. 1738 Princess Amellia of Great Britain by Jean Baptiste van Loo (auctioned by Sotheby's). Probably from Wikimedia; fixed spots & cracks w Pshop 1308X1713.

ca. 1739 Elisabeth Christine von Braunschweig-Bevern by Antoine Pesne (Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten - specific location ?). From Wikimedia; fixed spots w Pshop 2431X3322.

ca. 1739 Lady by Herman van der Mijn (location ?). From tumblr.com/jeannepompadour 642X792.

ca. 1739-1740 Woman Standing in a Garden by Arthur Devis (location ?). From history-of-fashion.tumblr.com/post/123799742529/ab-1739-1740-arthur-devis-portrait-of-a-woman via pinterest.com/amisiak1193/stroje-damskie-1700-1800/;  fit to screen 1980X2870.

[chaotic-history]

when i tell you i lost my fucking shit-

[tabellae-rex-in-sui]

Frederick should fuck me. I meet all his qualifications: I'm a guy

Truly all it takes to seduce a gay 1700s man who was violently kept in the closet during his teen years and most of his 20s

[j-august]

Lord John Hervey to Stephen Fox, in Lord Hervey and his Friends, 1726-1738, ed. The Earl of Ilchester

[italian-lit-tournament]

Italian literature tournament - First round.

Propaganda in support of the authors is accepted, you can write it both in the tag if reblog the poll (explaining maybe that is propaganda and you want to see posted) or in the comments. Every few days it will be recollected and posted here under the cut.

The propaganda here are in order from left to right, first Carlo Gozzi and then Guid Cavalcanti

Carlo Gozzi propaganda by @girlboccaccio

Do you like theatre? Do you like opera? Are you interested in commedia dell'arte? Do you like fables with dubious morales, fairy tales with dark hidden meanings, plays inspired by 16th morally ambiguous short tales and The thousand and one nights? If yes you should take two second and vote for Carlo Gozzi (yeah the funky guy in b/w on the left). Without him we couldn't have masterpieces like Puccini's Turandot and The Love for Three Oranges by Sergei Prokofiev. He was a great admirer of spanish literature and theatre. He defended commedia dell'arte and funky plays when this manners of making theatre were dying. Immaculate yeah? He wrote an autobiography named Useless Memories, truly cunty, right? He was a rate A+ hater when he decided to start shitting against the king of the new modern way of writing theatre, Carlo Goldoni. He died in a Country that stopped existing in the last decade of his life (The Not So Serene Republic Of Venice) and lost all his friends in exile. He was the bitch of the venetian intellectual life. He was the bitch of the coolest italian actresses of the time. He was friend with Francesco Algarotti, the loveboy of Frederich the Great.

Fella, if you love the 18th century, you have only one choice in you hand: vote Carlo Gozzi.

Propaganda in favor of Guido Cavalcanti by @eresia-catara

May I add further propaganda for Guido: He's a noble, he disdains aristocrats, he was Florence's number one Server of Cunt, he was the city's faggot, he was heretical, he went on a random pilgrimage but interrupted it and managed to be buried in a church anyway, he had an archenemy who sent some men to murder him on said pilgrimage, he came back and tried to murder him back in plain daylight, he gave zero fucks about politics, he got exiled because he was considered a menace for the city. He SAW DANTE's poetical talent, encouraged it, shaped it, and through him the whole of italian literature. Think about it. Also they became besties until they evolved to a tormented psychosexual haunting dynamic (see break-up poem) where Dante himself actually exiled him. In the 13th century his poetry anticipates so many of the literary themes of the XXth century, going from fragmentation of the self (his is basically vivisection and dispersion of his parts), to dissociation from one's own mind and body, lack of identity, irony, desecration, his poetry is full of schizophrenic-like hallucinations, reading them is truly a trip, and yet his language is profoundly meoldic and sweet. And there's also gender-fuckery. and theater, of course, because his poems develop like a scene from a theater (adding layers to the dissociation). So really he has it all guys.

Guido Cavalcanti propaganda by @girldante

GUIDO CAVALCANTI PROPAGANDA ABBIAMO:

LA DISSOCIAZIONE SCHIZOFRENICA:

IL COMICO, IL SIMPATICO BURLONE, IL MEMATORE ANTE LITTERAM:

IL MACABRO, IL GORE, I SINTOMI™

IL BREAKUP TOSSICO PASSIVO AGGRESSIVO CON DANTE

in conclusione

[oldfritz]

Hey sorry if this is bothering you but I'm debating someone on reddit rn and they declare that Fritz wasn't queer/gay and was straight and I need like all the sources I can find, so next to my own research I thought I'd ask around as well.

If you can't or don't want to provide that's absolutely fine as well!!!

.....this on r/prussia? I hate that place. Said they don't allow fascists but what do you find in the comments? Fascists. Yeah, I'll help you out. Though, really hun, you're better than arguing with schmucks on Reddit. Don't let the Kaiserboos and Goosesteppers Anonymous take up too much more of your time. Observe them behind glass, take your notes, and go armed into the world.

Anyways, here's my your our sources that make a case for Fritz's queerness (and under a cut for kindness):

Starting off with Fritz's erotic letter to Algarotti. This version is translated by historian, and cool enough guy and Twitter follow, Giles Macdonogh. I appreciate that he gives it a more lyrical feel, as opposed to some literal translations of Fritz's poetry that just make him look overly hackish. Algarotti is noted for a lot of things but what's relevant here is being one of Fritz's possible paramours (and also one of my personal faves). This isn't a smoking gun on its own, but combined with the totality of everything else, it's revealing. Pretty much what the article/Macdonogh raises, I agree with.

Frederick the Great: The Magnificent Enigma by Robert B. Asprey. For all these books, you'll wanna search for- von Keith, Katte, homosexuality, foppishness/effeminacy, Algarotti, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Elisabeth Christine/the queen. I've got physical copies of all these and have no clue if the Internet Archive versions give you access to the index. Hope they do!

Frederick the Great: King of Prussia by Tim Blanning. In chapter three, "The Making of Frederick," there's a big ass section about his queerness. Some people disagree with how Blanning translates his French; he certainly has a flare for the dramatics just comparing differing English and German translations.

Frederick the Great by Giles Macdonogh.

Iron Kingdom by Christopher Clark. He leads you to some interesting primary sources, even if I find his conclusion rather milquetoast.

Frederick the Great by Nancy Mitford.

If you can read German, here's a database of everything Fritz has ever written. You see a letter mentioned in one of the books above, you can find it for yourself! Goes for his memoirs too and a bunch of other shit. Searching for the names above (sans his wife) would be a good starting point.

Happy arguing!

[best-hohenzollern-ruler]

Friedrich der Große (r. 1740 - 1786)

'Old Fritz'

Friedrich and Catherine grasped that universal truth: Poland is a mess. They saw a kingdom fracturing apart at the seams - never you mind who helped to unstitch it - and their hearts wept for the plight of the Poles. In such a state of disarray, what were good neighbors to do but forcefully open the door and invite themselves in? Polnische Wirtschaft was replaced with Preußentum and our people have gotten along swimmingly since.

But that is enough of war, isn't it? No, such a man as Old Fritz was defined by many talents and interests. He prided himself on being more a philosopher than warrior and his creative pursuits attest to this capacity. Before ascending to the throne, he "anonymously" published a treatise titled The Anti-Machiavel. In it, he took a bold stance against prince's limitless pursuit of ambition and power were detrimental to the state and that the best way to rule was with a just mind and heart. While some argue vociferously about what this reveals about the king in light of his wars with Austria, I believe a man should be allowed to say whatever he so chooses and not be held to it. And that is the height of philosophy. (Note: Was your mother a Frenchwoman? -L)

Friedrich, like a dragon, could have hoarded all the brilliance of the lands for himself. But that was not his style, not the color of his soul. Prussia was not to be Sparta alone, but Athens as well. The Academies of Art and Science were revitalized, having fallen into a state of negligence during his father's reign. The Berlin Academy under his reign attracted enlightenment heavyweights such as Maupertius, Francesco Algarotti, Le Mettrie, and others we simply can't afford the space to print. It was under his reign that Berlin began to attract the intellectual prestige it has increasingly been known for.

Albrecht (r. 1525 - 1568)

Duke of Prussia

Albrecht was the first ruler within European with the courage to throw off the yoke of Catholic tyranny. He embraced Lutheranism with open arms, a choice that would echo down from the Hohenzollerns to people of Prussia. Indeed, the wealth he stole reappropriated from papal purses enriched the livelihoods of his nobles. How does this benefit the peasant class? Well, as Herr Reagan was explaining to me one night in Hell, [the rest is scribbled out, followed by 'NO -L' and underlined three times]

Albrecht took a keen interest in the development of schools throughout ducal Prussia. His crowning achievement in this regard was the establishment of Königsberg University, which was intended to rival the Catholic Krakow Academy.

[enlitment]

See, I'm taking my research extremely seriously. I'm even annotating and stuff.

[saintjustienne]

Just a niche information: apparently Francesco Algarotti kept a small portrait of Fritz in a snuffbox.

[More informations and translations after the cut]

The following passages are from his correspondance with Mauro Tesi [10th tome of his Opere Complete], an italian painter of whom he was a patron and friend and who he affectionately called "Maurino" (he died of tuberculosis too two years after Algarotti).

The letters date back to 1762/63.

[The translation from italian is mine.]

"[...] I thank you for your care so that Gamma makes the portrait of the king well. I'm sure you will have drawn the oval in beautiful proportions so that it can be put in one of my snuffboxes with a little golden frame. The attached paper is about the size of the inside of the snuffbox. If you could try to copy it with your watercolors I would really like to see the result which will surely be beautiful. I can assure you that it's very much alike."

"Good job my beloved compare [I chose to mantain the italian term which refers to someone who is the godfather of another one's baby. Apparently Algarotti was the godfather of one of Maurino's daughter and they started to call each other since then]; you couldn't have done better and I congrats Alexander [Frederick] for having found another Apelle [portraitist of Alexander the Great]. I won't say more because anything I could say would be unfair to your beautiful portrait."

"[...] I have found the portrait of the king of Prussia [a few letters before he wrote Maurino to tell him that he had lost the portrait and he was sad about it] and I will put it in a box where it will stay like in an alcove."

Sadly there is no way (as far as I know) to know what happened to the portrait or the snuffbox after his death (if only there was a list of his possessions). But I thought it was a nice detail.

Despite everything, I think they cared about each other (see the last letter Fritz wrote to Algarotti, not knowing he was already dead, asking him news of his health and hoping he could see him again in Sanssouci. Maybe I will translate that too if someone is interested).

[oldsardens]

Johann Georg Weikert - Francesco Conte Algarotti

[chaotic-history]

Nothing will ever top BBC 4 calling Fritz a power bottom, absolutely iconic of them

[tabellae-rex-in-sui]

tell me fun facts about friedrich der große please <3 (also do you want to see a photo of the time the potatoes on his grave were decorated to have little faces?)

I'm so bad at fun facts, I never know what to say cuz I don't wanna give the ones everyone already knows like "he loved Italian greyhounds" or "he drank coffee with champagne and mustard" but I'll try

• According to Voltaire, he had mousy hair

• His nickname for Algarotti "Swan of Padua" is a reference to Zeus' transformation into a swan in the Leda and the Swan myth. He has quite a bit of art depicting this myth

• He loved highly seasoned, spicy and greasy food to the point that it was a health concern, specifically eel pies (according to Mirabeau). His last meal was a lobster.

• He wrote letters as his dog Biche and exchanged them with his sister, Wilhelmine who wrote them as her own dog, Folichon. According to the letters, the two dogs were romantically involved

• Related, he also wrote a poem as his dog Diane, who had recently given birth. The poem was addressed to his niece-in-law, encouraging her to have children too

• Also according to Voltaire he was 167cm tall (5'2 pied du roi)

• He signed his name a few different ways, one of which was "Federic", which I guess he thought sounded better than "Frédéric"?

Anyone's free to add more! lol

And yeah I'd love to see the potatoes!