(Spring, 1573)
"In 1583 Emperor Rudolf II (1576–1612) switched the imperial court from Vienna to Prague. This was to be the first and last occasion in which Prague would hold centrestage in the Habsburg Empire, and as such is seen as something of a second golden age for the city (the first being under Emperor Charles IV; see p.85). Bad-tempered, paranoid and probably insane, Rudolf had little interest in the affairs of state – instead, he holed up in the Hrad and indulged his own personal passions of alchemy, astrology and art. Thus, Rudolfine Prague played host to an impressive array of international artists, including the idiosyncratic Giuseppe Arcimboldo, whose surrealist portrait heads were composed entirely of objects. The astronomers Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe were summoned to Rudolf’s court to chart the planetary movements and assuage Rudolf’s superstitions, and the English alchemists Edward Kelley and John Dee were employed in order to discover the secret of the philosopher’s stone, the mythical substance that would transmute base metal into gold. Accompanied by his pet African lion, Otakar, Rudolf spent less and less time in public, hiding out in the Hrad, where he “loved to paint, weave and dabble in inlaying and watchmaking”, according to modern novelist Angelo Maria Ripellino. With the Turks rapidly approaching the gates of Vienna, Rudolf spent his days amassing exotic curios for his strange and vast Kunst- und Wunderkammer, which contained such items as “two nails from Noah’s Ark…a lump of clay out of which God formed Adam…and large mandrake roots in the shape of little men reclining on soft velvet cushions in small cases resembling doll beds”. He refused to marry, though he sired numerous bastards, since he had been warned in a horoscope that a legitimate heir would rob him of the throne. He was also especially wary of the numerous religious orders which inhabited Prague at the time, having been warned in another horoscope that he would be killed by a monk. In the end, he was relieved of his throne by his younger brother, Matthias, in 1611, and died the following year, the day after the death of his beloved pet lion."
(The Rough Guide to Prague, 2011)
