UC Riverside

When the Albertine Dukes of Saxony gained the Electoral privilege in the second half of the sixteenth century, they ascended to a higher echelon of European princes. Elector August (r. 1553-1586) marked this new status by commissioning a monumental tomb in Freiberg Cathedral in Saxony for his deceased brother, Moritz, who had first won the Electoral privilege for the Albertine line of rulers. The tomb’s magnificence and scale, completed in 1563, immediately set it into relation to the grandest funerary memorials of Europe, the tombs of popes and monarchs, and thus establishing the new Saxon Electors as worthy peers in rank and status to the most powerful rulers of the period. By the end of his reign, Elector August sought to enshrine the succeeding rulers of his line in an even grander project, a dynastic chapel built into Freiberg Cathedral directly in front of the tomb of Moritz. The dynastic chapel, designed by court artist Giovanni Maria Nosseni (1544-1620) and completed in 1594, was sumptuously decorated in precious stones quarried locally, some of which were even unique to the region. Elector August collected precious stones and gems and employed many of his court servants, including Nosseni, to survey his lands for additional sources of stone. The Elector even practiced stone carving within his residence, in a newly named wing called the Kunstkammer, one of the first established in northern Europe. Informed by his own experience working his local stones in his Kunstkammer, August initiated a collection of locally quarried precious stones, the literal economic bedrock of his territory, and emphasized their representational capability in the form of diplomatic gifts and public monuments. The dynastic chapel established the Albertine line as worthy members of the highest level of nobility and the local stones decorating the interior represented the valuable resources unique to Saxony as well as the supreme power of its rulers to realize the full potential of their territory.