Princes and Artists: Patronage and Ideology at Four Habsburg Courts 1517-1633

The relationship between artists and their patrons has always been a complex and fascinating one. This is especially true of the Habsburg rulers of the 16th and 17th centuries, not only because they are themselves of intrinsic interest, but because the artists whom they encouraged or employed – Dürer, Titian, El Greco, Rubens – were among the greatest of all times.

In Princes and Artists Professor Trevor-Roper analyses the Habsburg patronage of art through the careers of the Emperor Charles V (1500-58), his son Philip II of Spain (1527-98), the Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) and ‘The Archdukes’ – Albert and Isabella – who ruled the southern Netherlands from 1598 to 1633.

In the context of their lives, their courts and their political activities, art played an immensely important role – partly propaganda, partly sheer aesthetic pleasure. The author argues that the distinctive characteristics of patronage in this period are to be explained by the ‘world picture’ of the age: ‘Art symbolised a whole view of life, of which politics were a part, and which the court had a duty to advertise and sustain.’