The Archduke Ferdinand II of the Tyrole

1529-1595

Archduke Ferdinand II, the son of the Emperor Ferdinand I and Anna Jagello, is above all remembered as a collector and a patron of the arts. In a suite of rooms at Ambras, his summer residence near Innsbruck in Austria, he installed the first museum north of the Alps. The collections were deliberately presented as an integrated whole, intelligible to visitors, with the aid of lightning, colour and form.

The five armouries in the cabinets known as Kunst- und Wunderkammer convey an impressive picture of the Archduke Ferdinand's predilection for armour, a passion with is amply documented in many ways, both from tournaments in general and from masked tournaments at festivities with allegorical themes. In 1547, when Ferdinand, barely 18 years old at the time, was appointed his father's deputy in Bohemia, he immediately held a masked tournament in the gardens adjoining the Hradschin castle in Prague. That occasion is recorded in detail in a series of watercolours painted in 1549. The knights from his Bohemian court appeared disguised as youth brides, but above all as Turks and Orientals. This latter disguise reflected the threat from the East, which had been steadily growing ever since the Battle of Mohacz in 1526. The Ambras collections include 12 Moors' and Turks' heads intended for "hussar tournaments" (Huszarische Turnier) of this kind, and masked tournaments are the subject of a series of frescoes in the castle (Hochschloss).

A turning point in the historical development of the festival culture of the Late Renaissance came with the Imperial tournament in Vienna in 1560, given by Ferdinand's elder brother, the future Emperor Maximilian II, in honour of their father, the Emperor Ferdinand I. The herald Francolin Burgunder's description of the tournaments by land and sea, the banquet and the "Mummereien" reflects an extravagant mise-en-scéne, the programmatic elements of which were inspired partly by the Burgundian tradition and partly by "The Adventure in the Dark Castle" in Binche in 1549. The role of the Archduke Ferdinand, apparently, was to perform in the more conspicuous episodes. In the "Mummerei" he was dressed as a Roman Sibylla, in a "Freiturnier" he declared the eagerness of the Christians to fight "the Turkish bloodhound" and, finally, he headed a display by his dressage horses in the inner courtyard.

Similarly, the marriage of William V of Bavaria and Renate of Lorraine, in Munich in 1568, was celebrated in the masked tournament tradition. The knights wore various costumes in carnival style, with no thematic connection between them. The Archduke Ferdinand, who was the bridegroom's maternal uncle and closely connected with the court at Munich, played the part of a Roman consul. In addition, there were parody tournaments in "Stechzeugen" from about 1500, in which the knights, when they fell of their horses, landed upside down in the snow "like bulbs".

The Ambras armoury, incidentally, incorporated the collection of arms and armour inherited from the Emperor Maximilian I, including "Renn-" and "Stechzeuge" and "Anlegstühlen" (aids for donning armour), which, accordingly, were probably used on this occasion.

The wedding of the Archduke Charles of Inner Austria and Maria of Bavaria, in Vienna in 1571, had a much more modern programme with a distinct Italian influence. The programme for running at the ring, whose authors included Giuseppe Arcimboldo, featured a contest between Juno and Europa, in which the Olympian gods, the continents, the virtues, the liberal arts, the seasons, the planets and and the metals took part at personifications of the forces ruling the world.

Here, for the first time, the Archduke Ferdinand appeared as Jupiter, in a chariot drawn by griffins - a role to which he was to remain faithful on many subsequent occasions. One such opportunity was the wedding, in Innsbruck in 1580, of the courtier Johann von Kolowrat and Katharina von Payrsberg, the splendour of which greatly exceeded the couple's real standing.

This time the Archduke Ferdinand appeared as host and as an arranger of allegorical tournaments on the grand scale, well-versed in mythology. His "inventiveness" and "connoisseurship" were already attested by contemporaries during this period as governor in Prague.

While there, on the occasion of his father's entry into the Bohemian capital in 1558, he staged a "Joyeuse Entrée" in which classical deities and giants appeared together with such traditional accessories as towers and fire-spouting mountains, as a concession to lovers of spectacle.

The Kolowrat wedding was completely different, with a mythological programme and expressive scenes appealing to the intellect and culture of the audience. The focal point of the festivities was the tilting at the ring, and for these pageants Ferdinand composed 37 articles. The third and fifth pageants are particularly interesting, with their amalgamation of mythology and history in a cosmological programme of manifold significance and with a distinct political intention. Ideologically, this display of cosmic diversity, alluding to the person of the prince, is fully in keeping with the aim of collecting during the Late Renaissance, as expressed for example in Giulio Camillo's "Idea del Teatro" in 1550.

The last great festival to be planned by the Archduke Ferdinand was his second wedding, to Anna Catharina Gonzaga in Innsbruck, in May 1582. Compared with the immense quantity of costly accessories - specially made suits of jousting armour, gifts which included the papal gift of honour (a consecrated sword and a consecrated hat), the actual festivities are scantily recorded.

The customary entry of the guests, through newly erected triumphal arches, was followed by a banquet at the castle in Innsbruck. During the tournament - tilting at the quintain, "Italian joust" (Welsch Gestech) and the skirmish (Scharmützel) - the knights appeared disguised as Amazons, peasants and savages. But the Trojan horse in Sigmund Elsässer's pictorial record shows that complex spectacles such as that of the Aeneid, the story of Aeneas, were also included.

No sons were born of the Archduke Ferdinand's second marriage, and so there was no heir to his title. The last years of his life were a period of increasing political resignation which, combined with failing health, provided little stimulus for spectacular festivities. This was a period of declining political power, but at the same time the most fruitful episode in the development of the Ambras collection, which was augmented through systematic purchases and put on display in a building erected for the purpose.