3-003-904 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Presentation piece to the Emperor Charles V., 1861. '...an ornament in silver, quaint in design but beautiful exceedingly in workmanship, which is supposed to have been given to Charles V. in commemoration of the stupendous victory obtained by his forces over Francis I., at the battle of Pavia, in 1526. The original forms part of the celebrated Ambras Collection, in the Belvidere at Vienna. This collection takes its name from the Castle of Ambras, near Inspruck, in the Tyrol, which belonged to the Archduke Ferdinand..., a Prince who, full of the revived spirit of learning which arose in the sixteenth century, commenced, about the year 1570, the most splendid collection of works of art of every kind then existing, and named it the Chamber of Arms, Arts, and Curiosities...It is, perhaps, the most interesting historical collection in the world, and has preserved for us all that was remarkable in armour and arms, in the arts of sculpture and painting, the industrial arts, the literature, printed and in manuscript, not of Europe only, but also of the East...No lover of the arts, the literature, the history of the sixteenth century should fail to visit Vienna in order to study these and countless other antiquities...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.