Emperor Rudolph II

Small full-length portraits, mostly paintings, but sometimes executed in other media, were common objects for display in the Cabinet (small, private rooms for the storage and display of collectors' curiosities). This high relief sculpture is executed in wax, a medium which allows for the use of colour, and the texture of which naturally suggests flesh. It was made by Wenzel Maler, one of the leading exponents of wax modelling in seventeenth-century Nuremburg, and depicts the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II. The date of 1606 may suggest that the portrait is intended to comemorate the ending of the so-called Long War against the Ottomans, which was concluded in that year.