| The work of artists at the Imperial court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1576--1612) cannot be isolated from underlying court belief in the "magical universe" of the late Renaissance. Past historiography has often focused on the personality of the Emperor himself, at the expense of situating works of art more specifically in the context of his collection and court. While the paintings Rudolf commissioned and collected may have functioned in part as entertainment, they were also part of a collection that was an important expression of and consolidation of the ideology of rule. To this end, a number of artists at Rudolf's court invoked astrological tenets and traditional cosmological concepts in their images, images which have not been explored in detail in existing scholarship.;For an understanding of the iconography involved in these depictions, several works of art by the Limbourg Brothers and Albrecht Durer are discussed as examples of artistic production which have astrological and astronomical significance. These works are discussed as precedents to the astral iconography in use at the court of Rudolf II primarily in the art of Georg Hoefnagel. A contextual discussion of astral science at the court, focusing on the work of Tycho de Brahe and Johannes Kepler, establishes the tenacity of the traditional cosmology at the court. The significance of cosmology in interpretations of works of art in the imperial Kunstkammer, especially the numerous love mythologies created by Bartholomaus Spranger, is then considered. In conclusion, I offer some observations on the transition from the "magical" universe to the "mechanistic" cosmology of the seventeenth century. |
