The Royal Summer Palace, Ferdinand I and Anne

Abstract

This essay examines the iconography of the best-known relief from the renaissance Royal Summer Palace at the Prague Castle, depicting Ferdinand I of Habsburg and his wife Anne Jagiello. It highlights its marriage symbolism and the question of the dowry. In the relief Anne, heiress to the Czech Lands, gives her husband an olive branch symbolising peace. In the context of the political significance of the palace’s decoration the relief expresses Ferdinand’s view of his claim to the Bohemian throne, based on his marriage to the heiress. Due to opposition from the Bohemian Estates, this finally became his lawful right in 1545, 24 years after the royal wedding. The Italian sculptor Paolo della Stella expressed a search for a peaceful solution to Ferdinand’s succession. The relief was carved between 1540 and 1550. The interpretations do not rule out the possibility that it was made after Anne had died (1547).