PARIS.- The Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612), a great patron of the arts and sciences, was also one of the European rulers most keenly interested in the study of nature. He invited scholars and artists from throughout Europe to his court, where they worked in close proximity to each other within the castle walls in a propitious climate of intellectual and religious tolerance, turning Prague into a veritable laboratory: a place of experimentation.

As a new approach to understanding nature through observation was developed, the sciences and the arts exerted a mutual influence on one another. This innovative aspect of the artistic practices in Prague, in conjunction with early developments in experimental science, invites us to reconsider the melting pot which was Prague under Rudolf II, and to view this period less as the dying embers of the Renaissance and more as the promising budding of modernity.

Organised in partnership with Prague’s National Gallery, this exhibition currently on view at The Louvre comprises around a hundred works (objets d’art, sculptures, paintings, prints and drawings, scientific instruments, manuscripts, etc.), most of which were commissioned or purchased by Rudolf II for his Kunstkammer. The majority of the works come from Prague collections and the Louvre, but there are also items from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, and the Bibliothèque de l'Observatoire in Paris.

In the art world, the Prague court is still associated with a paroxysm of late Mannerism with its sophisticated allegories, whimsical colouring and doctrines of artificial elegance. Its historical counterpart might be the figure of Rudolf himself: an aesthete and a neurasthenic emperor.

This exhibition aims to shed light on another, lesser-known facet of the art produced at Rudolf II's court. Alongside this ‘mannerist’ influence, there was a second ‘naturalist’ current: this included artists who depicted nature, whether they focused on capturing landscapes like Roelandt Savery, Peter Stevens and Paulus van Vianen, or on representing flowers and animals on parchment, as Hans Hoffmann, Daniel Fröschl and Joris Hoefnagel did, or on panels, as Savery did.

Sizing up the World

The convergence of scientific and artistic perspectives on nature was particularly acute at the Prague court. It was characterised, first of all, by a new direct observational approach. Artists actively participated in the earliest stirrings of empiricism, not only by producing scientific instruments which were as aesthetically pleasing as they were innovative, but also by creating drawings of plants and animals they which played a major role in the inventorying of living species, a key focus of the natural sciences at the time: six pages from one of Joris Hoefnagel's major works, The Four Elements, are displayed together as part of the exhibition. Like scientists, artists were also interested in the hidden forces at work in nature, which they expressed through the device of allegory. Painters such as Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Daniel Fröschl, and the Hoefnagels, as well as sculptors like Nikolaus Pfaff made use of allegories in their work. All shared the same humanist culture, generally acquired through books and inherited from antiquity. Yet the coherent system described in these earlier works did not stand up to the attentive observation of an impermanent, capricious nature.

An Impermanent and Capricious Nature

This curiosity about the natural forms, common to both scientists and artists, contributed to the renewal of artistic creation in Prague. New practices such as drawing en plein air came into vogue, and this direct experience of nature encouraged artists to experiment with new materials and subjects, including many that had previously been considered unworthy of being used or depicted. A taste developed for new artistic techniques imitating the singularity of natural forms and evoking the instability inherent in the growth processes of living things. The hardstone vases created by Ottavio Miseroni and his brothers are some of the most outstanding examples of this new artistic focus. As for Paulus van Vianen, a master silversmith and an innovative and refined landscape artist, his influence led Roelandt Savery and Pieter Stevens to reinvent their styles.

Organized by:

Head curators: Alena Volrábová, Director of the Collection of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery Prague; Xavier Salmon, Director of the Department of Prints and Drawings, Musée du Louvre.

Exhibition curators: Philippe Malgouyres, Senior Curator in the Department of Decorative Arts, and Olivia Savatier Sjöholm, Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings, Musée du Louvre.