As with the historical Green Vault, the new Green Vault contains an embarrassment of riches. Having missed the 'Moor with Emerald Slab' in the historical vault, I decide to make a beeline for Dinglinger's works.
There is no doubt that Johann Melchior Dinglinger was a jeweller and master craftsman of the highest order. His 'Golden Coffee Service' – a centrepiece in silver, gold and enamel – comprises 45 vessels encrusted with 5,500 diamonds elaborately arranged on a pyramidal étagère. The work is an exuberance of exotic shapes and colours, with intertwined snakes, salamanders and frogs decorating the coffee pot perched on the apex. Augustus was so delighted with the creation he reputedly paid 50,000 thalers for it – almost equivalent to the cost of building Moritzburg castle.
'The Throne of the Grand Mogul Aureng-Zeb' is another of Dinglinger's masterpieces. A contemporary of Augustus, Aurangzeb held the world monopoly on diamonds and had his own gold mines. According to the audioguide, Aurangzeb was 'viewed by European rulers as the quintessential oriental potentate, embodying absolute power and infinite wealth'. Occupying an area of nearly one metre square, Dinglinger's display is made up of over 130 bejewelled enamel figures, all of which can be freely moved, and over 5,000 diamonds and precious stones. Aurangzeb himself is seated on a red cushion in the centre of a golden pavillion, surveying the scene from a haughty angle. It took Dinglinger and his brothers seven years to complete the work, for which they were paid the princely sum of almost 60,000 thalers.
Other notable objets d'art in the new Green Vault include an ivory frigate by Jacob Zeller, with its delicate ivory mainsails and streaming pennants and rigging of gold wire; Dinglinger's Apis altar, with its focus on the ancient Egyptian Osiris myth of death and resurrection; and the colossal Dresden green diamond, the most valuable diamond in the entire jewel collection of the Green Vault.
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