Encompassing the world in the Alps: the Habsburg Court at Innsbruck in the late renaissance and early Baroque

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the importance of travel writing for understanding the cultural climate around the Habsburg dynasty’s court at Innsbruck, Austria during the late Renaissance and early Baroque. It argues that prominent travel accounts’ descriptions of the Innsbruck court reveal points of commonalities between popular and elite cultural understandings of objects associated with Habsburg piety and prestige. Furthermore, it contends that these travel accounts also illuminate how the objects themselves reflect the dynamic relationship between local Alpine traditions and global Habsburg interests.