The Entry of Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg into Basel

In 1809 Franz Pforr from Frankfurt and Friedrich Overbeck from L�beck founded the first association of artists in the modern sense in Vienna, the St Luke’s Brotherhood. It was established in opposition to the schematic historicism of the Vienna Academy, which was then the foremost institution of its kind under its director, the Neoclassical Heinrich F�ger. The members of the association were all patriotic, swore by the art of the old German masters, and wore their hair long under a beret. They wanted to live Spartan lives like monks, and undertook to sustain religious morals. While he was still in Vienna, Pforr examples of the new school, created one of the most remarkable The Entry of Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg into Basel.

This painting is the first large medieval subject painted in a deliberately historicist manner. Its flattened perspectives, awkward figures and bright colours are all calculated to achieve an effect of child-like innocence and naivet�. The work reflects the artist’s nostalgia for a proud period of Germanic unity under the Holy Roman Empire and his admiration for the first monarch of the Habsburg dynasty to be elected Emperor.