Rudolf II's Prague: astronomers, alchemists and wonders

When Rudolf II of Habsburg moved the imperial court permanently from Vienna to Prague in 1583, the city on the Vltava became within a few years one of the most unusual intellectual centres in Europe. The emperor, born in 1552 and crowned in 1576, was a reserved and melancholy ruler, little inclined to politics but passionate about art, astronomy, alchemy and collecting. Around him gathered painters, goldsmiths, mathematicians and seekers of the philosopher's stone, drawn by a generous patron and by a curiosity that knew no limits.

A court of stars and numbers

The most illustrious name linked to Rudolfine Prague is that of Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer who arrived in Bohemia in 1599 and died there in 1601. Johannes Kepler worked briefly at his side, inheriting his observations and the title of imperial mathematician. It was in Prague that Kepler published the Astronomia nova in 1609, containing the first two laws of planetary motion. The Rudolphine Tables, dedicated to the emperor, appeared only in 1627, many years after his death.

For contemporaries, astronomy and astrology were not yet separate disciplines. Kepler himself cast horoscopes, and Rudolf readily relied on celestial forecasts. This coexistence of rigorous calculation and a symbolic reading of the sky is one of the most characteristic features of the court: the same mind that measured orbits also wondered about the harmony of the cosmos and the signs it sent to humankind.

Dee, Kelley and the other alchemists

Between 1584 and 1589 the Englishman John Dee, a mathematician and student of angelic magic, stayed in Bohemia together with his controversial collaborator Edward Kelley. Dee left the region after a few years, while Kelley remained in the service of Bohemian nobles and of the emperor himself; he was knighted and later imprisoned, perhaps for failing to keep his promises of transmutation. The circumstances of his death, towards the end of the century, remain uncertain.

The court also welcomed the Pole Michał Sędziwój, author of alchemical treatises widely read in the seventeenth century, and the German physician Michael Maier, who would later publish the Atalanta fugiens, a book of alchemical emblems accompanied by music. Tradition also holds that Rudolf bought the mysterious manuscript now called the Voynich manuscript, but the story rests on a letter from the following century and has not been proven.

The Kunstkammer, a world in a room

The heart of the Rudolfine world was the Kunstkammer of the Castle, a cabinet of wonders that brought together paintings, sculptures, scientific instruments, clocks, gems, horns believed to belong to unicorns, corals and exotic objects. It was not a mere store of treasures: in the mentality of the age, collecting naturalia and artificialia meant recomposing in miniature the order of the universe. Among the court artists stood Giuseppe Arcimboldo, famous for his portraits composed of fruit, flowers and animals.

The last years of the reign were marked by political crises and by conflict with his brother Matthias, who forced him to surrender most of his domains. Rudolf died in Prague in 1612, and his collections were later dispersed, largely during the Thirty Years' War. What remains is the fame of an unrepeatable season and the partly legendary image of a magical Prague suspended between science and mystery.