![]() ![]() But he enabled Prague to enjoy a golden age of peace and creativity before Europe was engulfed in the Thirty Years' War.įilled with angels and devils, high art and low cunning, talismans and stars, The Mercurial Emperor offers a captivating perspective on a pivotal moment in the history of Western civilisation. As a result he lost his empire and nearly his sanity. Bartholomeus Spranger or Bartholomaeus Spranger (21 March 1546 in Antwerp 1611 in Prague) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, sculptor, and designer of prints.Working in Prague as a court artist for the Holy Roman emperor Rudolf II, he responded to his patron's aesthetic preferences by developing a version of the extreme style, full of conceits, which has become known as Northern Mannerism. ![]() But he also faced threats: religious discord, the Ottoman Empire, his own deepening melancholy and an ambitious younger brother. Like Faust, he was prepared to risk all in the pursuit of magical knowledge and the Philosopher's Stone which would turn base metals into gold and prolong life indefinitely. Rarely leaving Prague Castle, he gathered around him a galaxy of famous figures: among them the painter Arcimboldo, the astronomer Tycho Brahe, the mathematician Johannes Kepler, the philosopher Giordano Bruno and the magus John Dee.įascinated by the new Renaissance learning, Rudolf found it nearly impossible to make decisions of state. Click here to purchase from Rakuten Kobo In the late 16th century the greatest philosophers, alchemists, astronomers, painters, and mathematicians of the day flocked to Prague to work under the patronage of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, an emperor more interested in the great minds of his times than in the exercise of his immense power.
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