L a - b e a u t é - s a u v e r a - l e - m o n d e ~ D o s t o ï e v s k i

L a - b e a u t é - s a u v e r a - l e - m o n d e  ~  D o s t o ï e v s k i



Friday, August 16, 2019

A king's priorities - portraits of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor


Alonso Sánchez Coello, 1567. Archduke Rudolf was then fifteen years old.
Martino Rota, circa 1570s.
Martino Rota, 1580.
Circle of Frans Pourbus the Youger, circa 1580s.
 Joseph Heintz the Elder, 1594.
Studio of Hans von Aachen, circa 1590s.
Circle of Hans von Aachen, circa 1590s.
Hans von Aachen, circa 1590s.
Wax relief by Wenzel Maler, 1606.
As Vertumnus, by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, 1591. The Emperor was delighted with this whimsical portrait.

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Rudolf II (18 July 1552, Vienna – 20 January 1612, Prague) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). A member of the House of Habsburg, he was withdrawn, depressive, intellectual, bisexual, distracted. The opening paragraph in his Wikipedia entry gets his place in history just about right:

Rudolf's legacy has traditionally been viewed in three ways: an ineffectual ruler whose mistakes led directly to the Thirty Years' War; a great and influential patron of Northern Mannerist art; and an intellectual devotee of occult arts and learning which helped seed what would be called the scientific revolution.




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