Description

Uncommon portrait with miniature views of Prague and Bratislava on the lower corners shows the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II of Habsburg (1578-1637). Ferdinand, whose rule coincided with the Thirty Years’ War, restored Catholicism as the only religion in the Empire and suppress Protestantism.

The portrait was engraved by a Flemish Baroque painter, sculptor and engraver Jacob van der Heyden (1573–1645). The portrait was published in Aquila Austriaca. Das ist Historische Beschreibung und Abbildungen aller Römischen Kaiser und Könige in Nuremberg in 1660. The book included series of portraits of emperors of the Holy Roman Empire.

LITERATURE: Diepenbroick, 6019; Hollstein, XIIIa, S. 74; Singer, 24390; Wolfenbüttel, A 4529;