Hans von Aachen

Hans von Aachen was one of the star painters at the strangest court in Europe. Emperor Rudolf II, a Habsburg ruler who cared more about art, astronomy and alchemy than about governing, gathered painters, scholars and magicians around him in Prague around 1600, and von Aachen was among his favourites.

Despite the German name he had learned his craft in Italy, absorbing the sophisticated, elegant Mannerism of Venice and Florence, and he brought it north. For Rudolf he painted smooth, sensuous mythologies, elongated goddesses and allegories, and polished portraits, exactly the refined, slightly erotic taste the emperor loved.

He did more than paint. Rudolf sent him around the courts of Europe as a portraitist and as a buying agent, hunting pictures for the imperial collection and helping arrange marriages, so the painter doubled as a trusted diplomat. When Rudolf died in 1612 von Aachen stayed on with his successor, working in Prague until his own death in 1615, one of the last lights of that curious imperial world.