Introduction

Image: Vladislav Hall, Old Royal Palace, Prague.  Photo by Ștefan Jurcă, 24 August 2015, from Wikimedia Commons.

Built between 1493–1502, this room conjures up memories of the greatest of all princely patrons, practitioners and collectors a century later, the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudof II (reigned 1576–1612).

Sources for this topic include not only the objects and images which follow but also the many dedications of canonical texts to princely patrons in the early seventeenth century.  These include:

• Galileo Galilei, Starry Messenger (1610), dedication to Cosimo II de Medici: in Stillman Drake (ed.), Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957) pp. 23-6.
• Francis Bacon, Instauratio Magna (1620), dedication to James I: in Bacon, Works, ed. Spedding, Ellis and Heath (1857-74), vol. iv, pp. 11-12.
• William Harvey, De motu cordis (1628), dedication to Charles I: trans. R. Willis, in Harvey, Works, (1847), on archive.org.

Other relevant sources include the following:

• John Case, Sphaera Civitatis (Oxford, 1588), frontispiece.
• Tower of the Five Orders (1613-19), Schools Quadrangle, Bodleian Library, Oxford (on Cabinet)
• René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. and ed. J. Cottingham et al (3 vols. 1984-91, and reprints) Letters: vol. III, pp. 226-9, 369-70.