Rudolf II Moves the Imperial Court to Prague

JAN 01 1583 · 12:00

Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, painted by his court artist Hans von Aachen around 1606 to 1608. The Rudolfine court that drew Tycho, Kepler, Arcimboldo, and Spranger to Hradčany. Place: Prague Castle, Hradčany Figures: Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor · Giuseppe Arcimboldo, court painter · Bartholomeus Spranger, court painter · John Dee and Edward Kelley, English magi (arrive 1584) · Tadeáš Hájek, court physician and astronomer Rudolf II is melancholic, brilliant, multilingual, possibly schizoaffective, and entirely uninterested in Vienna. He has been emperor since 1576. In 1583 he packs the court, the archives, the camel from the menagerie, and the lion (named Otakar, presented by the Sultan), and moves the seat of the Holy Roman Empire to Prague. He will not leave for the remaining twenty-nine years of his life. Prague becomes, for the second time in two and a half centuries, the imperial capital. Charles IV's old Karlštejn-and-cathedral programme is replaced by something stranger: a court of cabinets of curiosities, alchemical laboratories in the Powder Tower, painters whose subject is metamorphosis, and an emperor who receives audiences in slippered silence.