The cabinet was designed for disassembly and sailed to England in five crates. The ship's captain later petitioned for losses incurred because he couldn't take on ballast and had to purchase a large amount of cork to protect the cabinet during the voyage.
The cabinet is named for Badminton House, the duke's seat in Gloucestershire. Against red-flocked walls, then green, the cabinet rested in relative obscurity until late 20th-century descendants sent it to auction to settle estate taxes.
Cator recalls that Johnson, the Polish-born widow of J. Seward Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson health care fortune, was smitten at first sight. Cator believes she intended to put the cabinet on public display -- its first -- in Warsaw. But her main contribution as an owner was to order up the first recorded cleaning since 1903. Notations inside the cabinet document one other cleaning, 90 years earlier.
The Liechtenstein Museum makes a fitting home. The Princely Collection celebrates the baroque era, which began in 16th-century Italy and flourished in 18th-century Vienna. The period was marked by an ebullient fusion of the arts to create an overwhelmingly impressive whole.
Nothing more perfectly describes the Badminton Cabinet. And judging from the museum's Web site (liechtensteinmuseum.at/en), the same can be said of its Garden Palace. The extravagant Roman baroque building boasts ceiling paintings by Andrea Pozzo. Works by Jan Bruegel, Lucas Cranach, Raphael, Rembrandt, Hals, van Dyck and more than 30 by Rubens grace the walls. There are sculptures by Mantegna, Giambologna, Sansovino and Susini. Porcelain, enamels, ivories, arms, tapestries and furniture await display.
The collection was open to the public from 1807 to 1938, in the garden palace. With Hitler's annexation of Austria, the prince fled, and the artworks were spirited out of the country. The collection came to rest in a warehouse in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, where it remained for most of the past 70 years.
In the aftermath of war, the prince's family sold some of its art, including the Leonardo da Vinci purchased in 1967 by the National Gallery of Art. But by the time Prince Hans-Adam II took up his responsibilities in 1989, the financial situation had improved. He spent $28.3 million to renovate the Vienna palace and reinstall the art in 25,000 square feet of modernized gallery space. At the opening in March, the prince acknowledged that "parts of the collection were lost, parts were destroyed," during the war years, but "it is almost a miracle that so much was saved. People courageously managed to step in and evacuate parts of the collection."
The palace has enough space to display only 180 of the family's 1,400 works, according to Kraeftner, and a second palace conversion may be in the offing. The prince, who declined to be interviewed, has been active in the art markets. The "Portrait of a Man" by Franz Hals was purchased last year.
The prince himself "never goes to auctions," Kraeftner said. "He decides if he wants something or doesn't want."
In the case of the Badminton Cabinet, an advisory board agreed to an amount, and a restorer was sent to inspect the object "without making too much noise about it," Kraeftner said. The next hurdle will be getting the crates safely to Vienna. A choice between Channel tunnel or sea has not been made. Vibrations make air transport out of the question, he said.
As an example of over-the-top extravagance, the Badminton Cabinet will be in good company at the Garden Palace. The museum Web site shows an ornate gilded coach used to transport a princely ancestor on formal visits to Versailles. It would have been part of a procession of 40 gold and silver transports, decorated with scenic panels painted in the workshop of Boucher.
