ABSTRACT
Among the more intriguing of the family icons initiated by Aemilia Juliana are the frescos Seivert Lammers painted in the King David room at Friedensburg palace in Leutenberg in 1687-1688. The scenes from the Old Testament account of the life of David that once adorned the walls of a room in the small palace, formerly her mother-in-law’s dower residence and later one of the family’s summer retreats, contained family portraits superimposed on the biblical figures. Not designed to elicit private devotion, these wall paintings served purely representational purposes. The equation with the dynasty of King David, ancestor of Christ, endowed the Schwarzburg family with an aura of divinely destined purpose in human history. But the depiction of Aemilia Juliana in one of the panels also served to convey her view of her role as ruler’s consort by means of an astonishing analogy.
