The Flemish Mannerist painter Friedrich Sustris wielded more than a skillful brush. Tastemaker to the Bavarian royal family in the late 16th century, he was a quintessential Renaissance man: Among other feats, he churned out portraits; created a triumphal arch studded with statues for the wedding of an Austrian princess; designed gardens and theatrical backdrops; enlarged a castle; built a college; and magnificently remodeled St. Michael’s Church in Munich when its tower collapsed. The artist (ca. 1540–99) also was an exceptional decorator, as two interiors at Fuggerhaus, a palace in Augsburg, Germany, bear witness. Recently stabilized by the World Monuments Fund, with additional support from the Bavarian State Authority for Monuments Preservation, national and regional foundations, and individuals, the rooms were reopened (by appointment) to the public on May 15. Atelier Schoeller, a conservation studio in Munich, and Günther Menath oversaw the restorations, including the reversal of damage caused by salt leaching through the plaster walls.

The man who originally paid for these extraordinary rooms was Sustris’s then-thirtysomething patron, Hans Fugger, a member of a banking family powerful enough to have received permission, at one time, to mint its own money. Cultured and multilingual, Fugger was keenly aware of his lofty status and anxious for his steep-roofed palace—in actuality a complex of stately houses and courtyards his granduncle Jakob Fugger the Rich constructed in the early 16th century—to embody the latest trends in design and architecture. Northern connoisseurs like Fugger had been seduced by the chic exuberance of the Italian Renaissance, and who better to renovate Fuggerhaus than Sustris, who had trained in Florence and had worked for the Medicis? Assembling a group of talents that included painter Antonio Ponzano, stucco master Carlo di Cesare del Palagio, and woodcarver Wendel Dietrich, Sustris led Fuggerhaus out of the gloom of the past into the future.

Left largely to his own stylistic devices—in The Court Art of Friedrich Sustris: Patronage in Late Renaissance Bavaria (Ashgate, 2001), scholar Susan Maxwell observes that Fugger was “far too busy to concern himself with issues of iconography”—the artist installed a parade of up-to-date living areas in the west wing of the palace, among them a chapel, library, and festival hall. All that survives of that project today (a World War II bombing resulted in a great deal of Fuggerhaus being rebuilt) are two airy ground-floor chambers brimming with Italianate spirit. In the words of British art historian John Julius Norwich, they are “among the most accomplished imitations of the southern manner in Germany.”

Though a 19th-century source refers to the adjoining spaces as Badstuben (bathing rooms), no evidence of this use exists; instead they seem to have served as a studiolo, or sanctum sanctorum, for the master of the house. Here rare coins, sculptures, natural curiosities, and antiquities—Fugger’s pride and joy was a fourth-century B.C. sarcophagus that now resides at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna—were displayed for private enjoyment or to be envied by guests led in from the neighboring loggia, which overlooked a courtyard garden planted in the exotic Italian manner (and still survives).

For the long, rectangular Musensaal, or Muse Room, Sustris shaped the ceiling into a billowing construction ornamented with growling stucco lion heads. High-relief bands of flowers and fruit frame the ceiling, and high niches shelter busts of Roman emperors. (The originals, made by Venetian craftsmen, disappeared long ago; 19th-century copies have taken their place.) The Musensaal’s pointed annular vaults are frescoed with whimsical grotesques inspired by the murals of Domus Aurea, Nero’s opulent villa in Rome, a site whose rediscovery transfixed the Renaissance. Scenes in a similar vein ornament the surrounding walls in cheerful shades of pink, blue, green, and yellow. Next door is the smaller, perfectly square Zodiakussaal, or Zodiac Room. It also features pointed arches, though romantic landscapes fresco the walls and representations of heavenly bodies encircle the vaulted ceiling.

Fugger must have been delighted by the efforts of the man he called Meister Friedrich, but the ballooning budget surely rankled him. Spanning five years, the undertaking reportedly cost 10,000 florins, about $2 million today. Sustris’s relaxed work ethic grated on his client as well. As Fugger warned the crown prince of Bavaria, who had hired Sustris to renovate a castle, “He enjoys his long walks so much that he often neglects his obligations and needs to be driven on and on as one would a lazy horse.”

Located at Maximilianstrasse 36/38 and now consisting largely of businesses and a few rental apartments, Fuggerhaus is owned by Alexander Graf Fugger von Babenhausen, a philanthropist and investor, who, along with his father, Hubertus Prinz Fugger von Babenhausen, helped fund the conservation. The Musensaal and Zodiakussaal are administered by the family’s cultural foundation and can be visited by appointment. For tour information, call 011-49-821-50207-0 or go to augsburg-tourismus.de.