Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria: A Second-Born Son in Renaissance Europe, ed. Sylva Dobalová and Jaroslava Hausenblasová

Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria (1529–1595), count of Tyrol, is probably not a household name for the general reader. He was, as this collective volume highlights, a second son in Renaissance Europe—a designation which conjures up the image of a landless and frustrated prince, eclipsed by more famous kinsmen. Ferdinand came from the imperial Habsburg line which produced plenty of them: he was a nephew of Emperor Charles V, son of Ferdinand I, brother of Maximilian II and uncle of Rudolf II, Matthias and Emperor Ferdinand II (with whom he is not to be confused). Ferdinand had two sons of his own, but they were born of a morganatic marriage, which meant that they could not inherit their father’s titles or estates. Indeed, one might be forgiven for thinking this archduke to have been something of an irrelevant dynastic loose end. But throughout his life, Ferdinand managed to play an important role, politically and culturally. A biographical chapter at the beginning of this volume sketches the outlines of this life: in 1547, when Ferdinand was 18 years old, his father sent him to Prague as his representative in the kingdom of Bohemia. He spent the first half of his adult life there, until 1567. In that year, he moved to Innsbruck as the new count of Tyrol. A second son, yes, but one who played a meaningful role as his father’s lieutenant in Prague (while his elder brother Maximilian was mostly left idle at his father’s court, grinding his teeth in frustration); one who became an independent prince after sharing his father’s inheritance with his two brothers; and one who managed to develop a cultural programme at his residence outside Innsbruck, Ambras, which was the envy of contemporaries and the inspiration for such renowned collectors as Rudolf II.

The trouble with studying Ferdinand lies in his divided biography, with decades spent in both Prague and Innsbruck. Few historians have the linguistic capabilities to deal with source materials in both Czech and German, and before the 1990s, political barriers prohibited scholars from visiting archives in both Austria and Czechoslovakia. This has led to a fragmented historiography which this volume attempts to overcome. The focus of the volume is on culture: Ferdinand’s court life, his portraiture and collections, and the humanist endeavours that flourished under his patronage. The aim is to present Ferdinand in the role of creator, investor and inventor in the context of formative processes within Central European culture, and to bring out the connection between Prague and Innsbruck.

The editors of the volume, Sylva Dobalová and Jaroslava Hausenblasová, have done an admirable job in bringing together scholars who can collectively, but also individually, cross the divide between Prague and Innsbruck. The result is a versatile volume that includes no fewer than twenty-five articles (too many to discuss individually in this review), under the headings ‘Dynasty, Court and its Festivities’, ‘Architecture: Residences in Prague and in Innsbruck’, ‘Fine Arts and Their Protagonists’, ‘Humanism, Science, Library’ and ‘Kunstkammer, Collections, Cultural Transfers’. While some contributions are limited to only one of the archduke’s life stages, quite a few indeed manage to weld together his lives in Prague and Innsbruck, mainly by focusing on the courtiers and craftsmen that followed him.

Ferdinand was financially dependent on his father while in Prague, which hampered his patronage possibilities, but nevertheless he took charge of local building work and developed an armoury. There, he was also in charge of organising the festivities for his father’s and brother’s coronations. In Innsbruck he was a sovereign prince, which shows in his attention to genealogy and the building of his fabulous collections. The inventory that was drawn up after Ferdinand’s death is a valuable source that is explored rigorously in more than one article. The volume offers some articles which are overviews of the riches to be found in these collections, both in text and in the form of splendid illustrations. Some articles offer up a sort of tour of highlights of Ferdinand’s collections rather than making a scholarly argument, but this can be forgiven because of the spectacular illustrations that go with them, and also because this means the volume is an excellent entry point for aspiring scholars hoping to engage with Ferdinand’s patronage.

For scholars of architecture, collecting and humanism in mid-sixteenth-century Central Europe, this volume thus offers plenty of wonders. It does, however, posit Ferdinand as a cultural patron rather than a statesman or a dynast. His position as a second son may be used to legitimise this approach—the editors highlight that much of his patronage came about in competition with his elder brother Maximilian. But this does leave one more lacuna to be filled: that of Ferdinand as a Habsburg patriarch. He had to accept relatively modest careers for his morganatically born sons, but it should not be forgotten that he always showed a great interest in the princely careers of his ‘fully Habsburg’ nephews: Ferdinand was involved in furthering the election of some of them to the Polish Crown, for example. That he could not be succeeded by a son does not mean that he was not a part of a line of rulers in Innsbruck: Ferdinand had himself buried in the same church that housed the spectacular monument of Maximilian I. His nephew Maximilian III became his successor as count of Tyrol (after missing out on the Polish throne), and after his death, another junior archduke took up this position. Ferdinand is a crucial link in this discontinuous line of Habsburg counts, that stretches from Maximilian I into the second half of the seventeenth century.

A more political perspective on Ferdinand will perhaps have to wait, but it can be hoped that many young scholars will be stimulated to focus their research on him by this beautiful volume.