2 June

Andrea M. Gáldy, Collecting Central Europe, LMU Munich

twenty-minute presentation followed by q & a plus discussion

The Collections of the House of Oldenburg in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

The history of ducal and grand ducal collections of the House of Oldenburg from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries has long been the subject of research. The works of art once owned by them and by the artist Tischbein - purchased in 1804 - went to the grand ducal paintings gallery and now form part of the Landesmuseum Kunst & Kultur in Oldenburg. Naturalia brought to Oldenburg and   became the Naturhistorisches Museum Oldenburg, founded in 1836 by Großherzog Paul Friedrich August. In his name a private collection of several thousand insects, birds and mammals had been acquired in 1835. Until recently, a reconstructed Naturalienkabinett was displayed together with archaeological and ethnological findings at today's Museum Natur und Mensch. An important part of this material, formerly the property of Ivan Antonovich Kuprejanov, was donated by Prince Peter von Oldenburg (1812-1881) in 1841. 

For the centuries before remain many blind spots, even though members of the von Oldenburg family had been Kings of Denmark from 1448, as well as Kings of Sweden, Tsars of Russia and Dukes of Schleswig Holstein. They were related to the Holstein-Gottorp familiy and, through Anna of Denmark, to the Electors of Saxony. Many of them were renowned collectors, for example August of Saxony who founded one of the first princely Kunst- and Wunderkammern in the Holy Roman Empire in 1560. Can it truly be the case that the Counts of Oldenburg in Oldenburg did not create a collection before the late eighteenth century?

The presentation attempts to provide a brief history of the von Oldenburgs' collections in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and some initial findings about their early collecting activities.

Andrea M. Gáldy is the founder of Collecting Central Europe. She gained her PhD in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Manchester in 2002. The focus of her research is on early modern European collections and on how trends and standards were then advertised and followed by collectors.
She has extensively published on the Medici collections of antiquities, naturalia and armour. Her research interests include the phenomenon of the kunst- and wunderkammer as well as the opportunities offered by the digital humanities to contemporary academic investigation and museological application. As a founding member of the international forum Collecting and Display, Andrea is the main editor of the series Collecting Histories with CSP (Newcastle). Andrea currently lectures at the Institute of Art History at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich.

23 June

Sylva Dobalová, Štěpán Vácha and Markéta Ježková, Studia Rudolphina Center IAH CAS

workshop with two twenty-minute presentations followed by q & a plus discussion

Rudolf II at Work and Play: Collecting and Diplomacy

Taking its cue from their contributions to the essay volume Spaces for Diplomacy (De Gruyter, 2026), this double lecture brings together three scholars to explore Prague as a diplomatic space during the reign of Rudolf II (1576–1612), when the city became the permanent seat of the imperial court. The presence of the emperor, his court, and the imperial and Bohemian offices turned Prague Castle and the urban area below it into a stage for diplomatic activity involving resident envoys, temporary delegations, agents, secretaries, members of diplomatic households, and artists entrusted with diplomatic tasks. Drawing on diplomatic correspondence, the speakers will examine how these activities were connected with specific places and how “space” may be understood not only as a topographical setting, but also as a field of action, negotiation, and communication.
For most of Rudolf II's reign (1576–1612), Prague was the permanent seat of the imperial court. The personal presence of the Emperor, his court, and the imperial and Czech provincial offices prompted extensive reconstruction of Prague Castle and the urban agglomeration below the castle.
The emperor’s court attracted diplomatic players of various types. They included diplomats at the level of authorised envoys permanently representing leading European rulers, smaller or larger foreign delegations coming to the emperor with specific temporary tasks, numerous agents and secretaries representing smaller states or interests of various individuals, as well as family members of the diplomats or artists with diplomatic tasks. Their activities – which we know about due to collections of diplomatic correspondence – always took place in connection with a specific space.
The term "space" can be understood in two ways in this context: firstly, as a topographically defined place, and secondly, as a space for action, which is shaped and influenced by the people who act and communicate within it.
Štěpán Vácha and Markéta Ježková
Public or Private: The Display of Art in Rudolf II’s Imperial Residence at Prague Castle
The presentation explores the complex relationship between the public and private aspects of Emperor Rudolf II’s art collection at Prague Castle. It emphasizes how the collection served as both a private source of enjoyment and a political tool for imperial self-representation, available to select diplomats and prominent guests. The presenters analyse how the arrangement of artworks in various castle spaces, such as private chambers and ceremonial rooms, reflected their levels of accessibility and significance. Art objects were not only displayed for Rudolf’s personal pleasure but also strategically used as a background for diplomatic interactions and political negotiations. Thus, the castle spaces functioned as courtly and diplomatic arenas, where Rudolf’s collection played a key role in enhancing imperial prestige and forging political alliances. The involvement of other actors, such as court painters and valets, further shaped how the collection was accessed and its broader role in diplomacy and politics.
Sylva Dobalová
Diplomats and the Recreational Spaces of the Habsburgs in Prague: What was there to See?
The itinerary for guests at the court of Rudolf II around 1600 included visits to recreational areas, numerous country castles, and game reserves. Yet these sites have received only limited scholarly attention, as research has focused primarily on the formal ceremonial setting of the imperial palace. A new analysis of textual sources, however, offers several specific insights. It reveals, for example, that the interiors of summer houses were often used for the emperor’s collecting activities, and that Rudolf II himself was present at a gift-giving ceremony involving horses in his gardens. The paper suggests that visits to recreational spaces may have served as a gesture of courtesy towards guests seeking an audience with the emperor — an audience that, at times, never materialised.
Štěpán Vácha is a researcher and head of the Department of Early Modern Art at the Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, where he has worked since 2007. His research focuses mainly on art at the court of Rudolf II, painting collections, and the visual representation of the Habsburgs. Recently, he led a Czech Science Foundation project devoted to the reconstruction and interpretation of Rudolf II’s painting collection at Prague Castle. He is the main author of the monograph The Emperor’s Eye: The Painting Collection of Rudolf II at Prague Castle, which will be published by Brepols. Vácha is editor-in-chief of the Studia Rudolphina bulletin and teaches art history at the Academy of Fine Arts and Charles University in Prague.
Markéta Ježková is a researcher at the Department of Early Modern Art at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She also has been working as a lecturer in art history in the National Gallery in Prague. Her research focuses on art collecting and cultural patronage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in circles associated with the court of Rudolf II. She is also interested in the popularisation of academic research and public engagement with art history through educational and digital projects - https://www.renaissanceprague.co.uk

Sylva Dobalová, PhD, is a researcher at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and managing editor of the journal Studia Rudolphina. Her research focuses on Rudolphine art and the Kunstkammer from the point of view of the representation of nature, and she is also interested in the leisure time and gardens of the Habsburgs. She has cooperated with the National Gallery in Prague on several projects, most recently on the exhibition „From Michelangelo to Callot: The Art of Manneristic Printmaking“ (2024). She was one of the editors of the book Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria: A Second-Born Son in Renaissance Europe (VOEAW Vienna, 2021).

27 October

Franka Horvat, independent scholar, Zadar, Croatia

lecture of 40 minutes followed by q & a plus discussion

Not Set in Stone: A Reinterpretation of Stonework from the Elaphiti Islands
The Elaphiti Islands off the coast of Ragusa (mediaeval Dubrovnik), are well attested in archival documents and are rich in mediaeval material remains. They  preserve fifteen churches dated from the ninth to the thirteenth century, as well as architectural traces of settlements. In previous scholarship these small single-aisle structures were analysed in the context of ethnogenesis and Christianisation, and attributed to wealthy landowners from the mainland. Conversely, I consider the churches from the islanders’ perspective and study them through the changing social conditions and cultural connections of the islands. In this talk I focus on the sculptural program of the Elaphiti churches, which were found in and around all of the churches, as well as scattered around the islands and reused as building material in secular contexts. I examine the collection from the Parish church on Koločep, which houses some of the best-preserved examples of liturgical furniture of the archipelago: the fragments which come from the church of Saint Nicholas on the aforementioned island. The exhibits include pieces of a reconstructed altar screen which contains the only preserved donor inscription in any of the Elaphiti churches, which has been link to Queen Helena of Hungary. I propose a different interpretation of the inscription and a re-evaluation of patronage patterns on the islands.

Franka Horvat is an art historian specialising in medieval art in the Mediterranean, particularly the intersection of art and socio-economic conditions in the periphery of the Byzantine Empire, with a special focus on archipelagos, insularity and small islands. Using an interdisciplinary approach which integrates art, architecture, archaeology, archival records, ethnographic evidence, literary and cartographic sources, she reevaluates the roles that small islands played in medieval Mediterranean networking systems. Her work includes the study of non-elite and marginalised people, village men and women, foreigners, and enslaved people – in short, the “other” ninety five percent who so often fall between the cracks in historical analyses. Franka completed her PhD dissertation “Insular Power: Reconstructing the Social, Economic and Artistic Networks of the Elaphiti Islands, Croatia,” at the Department of Art History at UCLA in June 2022, after which she taught six courses on medieval art at the same institution. She currently conducts research as an independent scholar.