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Students will be familiar with the most important artists active in Prague around 1600 and their works (paintings, sculpture, arts and crafts, prints) and will have gained a picture as comprehensive as possible of Emperor Rudolf II's collecting activities and interests.

Rudolf II (1552-1612), Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from 1576 to 1612 and King of Bohemia and Hungary, moved his residence from Vienna to Prague in 1583 and developed the city into an internationally important center of art. The painters Bartholomäus Spranger, Hans von Aachen and Joseph Heintz the Elder, the sculptor Adriaen de Vries, the stone cutter Ottavio Miseroni, the goldsmith Paulus van Vianen as well as clockmakers and other craftsmen worked at his court, creating art that was characteristic of the time and the emperor's particular taste.

Starting with the painted, printed and bronze-cast portraits of the emperor, the lecture will present examples from all areas of art at the court of Rudolf II. The style and iconography of the works will be explained, the interrelationships between the works of artists working in Prague and elsewhere will be shown and the particular importance of prints for the dissemination of Rudolf's art will be examined. Finally, the special interests of the art collector Rudolf II, for whom art agents were active throughout Europe, will be presented.

Lecture (in German)

The PowerPoint slides for the individual units will be provided on OLAT.

Written examination in which various topics covered in the lecture are tested.

• Prag um 1600. Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II., (Ausstellungskatalog Kulturstiftung Ruhr, Essen, Villa Hügel, 10.6.-30.10.1988), Freren 1988
• Prag um 1600. Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II., (Ausstellungskatalog Wien, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 24.11.1988-26.2.1989), 2 Bände, Freren 1988
• Prag um 1600. Die Beiträge des vom 25. bis 27. Februar 1989 vom Kunsthistorischen Museum in Wien veranstalteten Symposiums, Wien 1992
• Die Kunst am Hofe Rudolfs II., Prag 1991
• Rudolf II. und Prag. Kaiserlicher Hof und Residenzstadt als kulturelles und geistiges Zentrum Mitteleuropas, (Ausstellungskatalog Prager Burg – Wallenstein Palais, 30.5.-7.9.1997), Prag-London-Mailand 1997
• Rudolf II, Prague and the World. Papers from the International Conference Prague, 2-4 September, 1997, hrsg. v. Lubomír Konečný, Beket Bukovinská und Ivan Muchka, Prag 1998

• Further literature will be announced in the course of the lecture

LFU: online registration is required!