CHAPTER VI. 

 RUDOLPH'S ART-TREASURES. 



"Wherever power, or pride, or wealth keep court, 



Behold this fulsome race resort: 



A motley group a party-coloured pack, 



Of knave and fool of quidnunck, and of quack, 



* * 



Dabblers in science dealers in virtue, 

 And S3 T cophants of every form and hue. 

 Low Artists too, a busy babbling fry, 

 That frisk and wriggle in a great man's eye." 



Sir Martin Shee. 



]HE M^CENAS of Bohemia, as Rudolph was styled, 

 besides devoting his energies to alchemy and the 

 occult sciences was a liberal patron of art, and in 

 this activity showed the same weakness, extra- 

 vagance and caprice as when dealing with the disciples of 

 Hermes. He collected at enormous expense, and without 

 definite purpose, beautiful examples of the art of the sculptor 

 and of the painter^ as well as costly objects of artistic and 

 historical interest, and crowded them with no attempt at 

 intelligent arrangement into rooms, corridors and great halls 

 of the imperial palace. Rudolph's passion for art was not 

 without precedent on the part of those who had occupied the 

 imperial throne; the stately cathedral of Carl IV., the ex- 

 quisite Belvedere of Ferdinand, and the Byzantine, Italian 

 and German pictures decorating the same Cathedral and the 



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