The marble relief from the Villa Rugen

The marble relief from Villa RugenIn 1861, the villa of the von Rappard family was built on the southern slope of Kleiner Rugen. (Plate No. 5) The building in the style of a Wilhelminian country house offered refuge during the summer months. Clara von Rappard drew daily, played the piano, went for walks, read novels, non-fiction books and daily newspapers and paid visits.The rooms were given antique furnishings. In 1883, mother and daughter significantly redesigned the salon, the living room and the writing room. They painted the walls with their travel motifs. The bay window room in the tower was lined with oriental fabrics and decorated with copies of antique reliefs.

From 1896, Albertine and Clara von Rappard had to rent out parts of the villa to boarding house guests. After their deaths, relatives lived in the house, and in 1944 the villa went to the Canton of Bern. In the 1960s it fell victim to demolition.

Clara von Rappard and Heinrich Gerhard
The Villa am Rugen was the permanent residence of the von Rappard family, especially in summer, while the winter was spent mostly in Germany and Italy or on educational trips. Because women were not admitted to art academies at the time, Clara von Rappard received private lessons from various artists. One of her first teachers was the German painter Heinrich Dreber in Rome, with whom she regularly took drawing lessons as a young girl. Through him she also met the sculptor Heinrich Gerhard (1823-1915), the creator of our relief, in Rome in November 1871. Gerhard, who came from Kassel, had lived in Rome since 1844 and, like Dreber, belonged to the so-called German-Romans.Heinrich Gerhard visited the Villa Rappard in the summer of 1872, which Clara von Rappard recorded in her diary. There we also learn something about the figure on the relief:

"Frau Clara Schumann also came often and invited us to play before she left. Professor Gerhard, the sculptor from Rome, also visited us. He is such a cosy old man and we were very happy to see him again. He made the relief of Aunt Sophie - in the bay window - from a photograph of a living painting, where she crowns "Tasso" as "Leonore". I put fresh roses and wild vines on the laurel wreath every day. It is a wonderful work, what Gerhard has created there and completely her appearance. Behind her, where she walks, I have made the marble blue like the sea (...) On our hill we have erected a granite stone in her memory (...) During Gerhard's stay, the widowed Queen Elisabeth of Prussia stayed at Jungfraublick. Gerhard also knew her and she often came to visit us, i.e. she let us carry her."

Diary transcript of C.v.R. in the KMB