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This is a sixteenth century wax head of a sleeping child, mounted like a holy relic in a carved wooden tondo. I’m really more showing off there that I have learned a tondo is a circular work of art…. This is another piece of Habsburg-era oddness, a 1589 Austrian creation and I more wonder whether this child is at rest or quietly plotting something. Made of wax and wood, this disembodied cherub seems to me to be more of a masterpiece of serene discomfort. The inscription around the frame, “Hodie mihi, cras tibi”, translates loosely as “Today me, tomorrow you” which is not exactly comforting, especially when delivered via a child’s severed (albeit sleeping) head. It was likely designed as a memento mori, a not-so-subtle reminder of the fleeting nature of life, which I’m not sure people living at this time needed additional reminders of. The museum notes that these are fragile and rarely survive, although I suspect someone shoved it in a cupboard as I think it’s more unsettling than beautiful. But each to their own…..

A stirrup cup, for those unfamiliar with such decadent pre-departure rituals (to be fair, I had to Google it), was a parting drink offered to guests as they mounted their horses, one foot in the stirrup and the other edging towards a long and bumpy journey. It was meant to be fortifying, a little swig of something boozy (I doubt craft beer, but you never know) before you trotted off into the mud and misery of early modern travel. Most surviving stirrup cups take the form of animal heads such as foxes, hounds and stags, all very hunting-lodge chic. But every so often, someone went for something a touch more eccentric, and that brings me to this rather stern-looking Tyrolean lady. The museum say it’s a girl, which is possible, but I prefer the idea that it’s a grumpy middle aged woman. I’m really not sure that I would want to be given this, but perhaps that’s ungrateful.

Dating from around 1580 and carved with exquisite skill, she was almost certainly never meant to be exactly cuddly. Made of alabaster and gilded for effect, she looks like she’s about to lecture the owner on their choice of footwear or inform them that they’ve scandalously forgotten their gloves. I imagine that it was somewhat unnerving to drink from her, which might explain why guests were encouraged to down the contents quickly before she could judge them further. If I ever get a horse, which is unlikely if I’m being honest, I might get myself a stirrup cup, but not one looking like this….

This is a portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg and although the artist is unknown, I suspect that whoever it was had quite a lot of fun with the fur millinery. Let’s face it, there are hats, and then there is this hat which is a magnificent, if slightly ridiculous, statement piece. I like that the museum makes an effort to show the provenance of their artworks, which is also useful given they’ve inevitably got issues trying to resolve Nazi thefts, but this has been located in the gallery since at least 1772.

Sigismund (1368–1437) had one of those lengthy, overly complicated careers as he was King of Hungary, King of the Romans, King of Bohemia and finally Holy Roman Emperor. He’s perhaps best remembered for his role in organising the Council of Constance (1414–1418), which resolved the Western Schism by convincing three rival Popes to step down so a new one could be elected, which seems like the ecclesiastical equivalent of herding cats through treacle.

This formidable profile belongs to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, as depicted in a late sixteenth-century copy after Bernhard Strigel. It now lives in the ever-rewarding Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, where the galleries are so stuffed with imperial grandeur that this little gem is easy to overlook. Although my two loyal blog readers will be surprised and delighted to discover that I took several hundred photos in this museum, so there will be plenty more of this riveting series about the artworks that they hold.

Strigel’s original work dates to the early 1500s, but this later copy, which was made by an unknown artist with a steady hand and a healthy respect for the Habsburg nose, carries on the visual tradition of showing Maximilian in all his stately glory. It’s got everything, the velvet backdrop, the finely detailed clothing, the meditative stare into the middle distance, and of course, that profile.

Now, it would be terribly unfair to criticise a man’s face 500 years after the fact, but even his contemporaries might have quietly agreed that Maximilian’s features were distinctive. But this portrait doesn’t try to soften anything and nor should it. It’s an honest portrayal of dynastic power and in an age before soft-focus filters and PR advisers, that sort of thing was all the rage. He’s not smiling, of course, Habsburgs rarely did, but he had a lot to think about, perhaps he’s just remembered the size of his empire and the fact that half of it was currently at war. There’s a charming little manor in the background, complete with gables and a decent bit of shrubbery. Whether this was symbolic of imperial reach or just the painter filling in the space with some pleasant countryside I have no idea, but I like the idea of him (and it was probably a male) doing the latter.

Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death in 1519, was born in 1459 the son of Frederick III and Eleanor of Portugal, and to be frank, he didn’t waste much time on hobbies when there were marriages to arrange and bits of Europe to hoover up. His marriage to Mary of Burgundy in 1477 gave him a claim to the vast Burgundian lands, and he spent a good part of his life either defending them, diplomatically squinting at maps, or enthusiastically marrying off his descendants to unsuspecting European royalty. The man essentially arguably invented Habsburg real estate strategy which was don’t fight too many wars, just marry aggressively and wait. While he never made it to Rome to be crowned by the Pope, largely because the Papal calendar was apparently a bit sub-optimal when it came to welcoming awkwardly ambitious emperors, he went ahead and started calling himself Elected Roman Emperor anyway. Fair play. Maximilian was a reformer in a rather haphazard way, dabbling in early postal systems, legal centralisation and he was a cultured guy.

Anyway, I have digressed a little, but this is certainly a memorable painting…..