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Trausnitz Castle

Knights of St Georg Hall (room 25)

In this hall with its wooden coffered ceiling and elaborate fireplace, which was redesigned by Duke Ludwig X in 1535, you can see furniture and paintings from his epoch. It served as a reception room, dining room and meeting room. Ludwig X lived in the castle for 30 years and in 1536-43 built the town residence in the old town as a Renaissance palace.

The massive double cupboard with ash wood veneer is one of the few authentic items of furniture in the castle from the Renaissance period. The Renaissance chest from Tuscany replaces a chest of the same type and size that was in this hall from the Renaissance period on.

According to tradition the young woman in the velvet beret featured in the portrait above the chest is Duchess Hedwig, the bride at the Landshut wedding. The Polish king’s daughter was married in 1475 to the Landshut duke’s son Georg, who later became Georg the Rich of Bavaria-Landshut, at one of the most elaborate weddings of the Middle Ages. The legendary Landshut Wedding is re-enacted every four years with a large historical festival.

The six portraits (c. 1530) from an originally larger series primarily feature ladies connected with the Landshut Wedding in 1475 between Georg the Rich and Hedwig of Poland – relatives of the bridal couple and wedding guests such as the sister of the bridegroom, Countess Palatine Margarethe, and his aunt, Electress Anna von Brandenburg. They are examples of the so-called cloth painting of the Renaissance, where water-soluble distemper was applied directly to fine linen. This was a quicker way of painting and cheaper than oil painting on wood, but few such pictures have stood the test of time. Important artists such as Dürer painted on cloth.

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