Festivities, Fêtes & Digital Recreations
This section is dedicated to the festivities, pageantries and fêtes staged at the Habsburg court. It also includes the digital recreations of those spectacles.
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The Kolowrat Wedding Codex
In the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum is the so-called Kolowrat wedding codex filled with coloured copperplate engravings on paper depicting the elaborate tournament events staged on the occasion of the marriage of Johann Lipsteinsky of Kolowrat with Katharina of Payrsberg, which took place from 14 to 16 February 1580 in Innsbruck (inv. no. KK 5269).
The codex depicts the festivities held in honour of the marriage of a Habsburg courtier, Kolowrat, who was a chamberlain of the Tyrolian sovereign, Archduke Ferdinand II. The Archduke used the occasion to stage these events as a triumph in the style of the courtly festivals of the era. Ferdinand II harnessed the spectacle to demonstrate his sovereign and dynastic authority and documented them through a series of prints. The court painter Sigmund Elsässer furnished the designs, which were printed by the Innsbruck printer Hans Baur.
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A digital exhibition on the codex has been recently curated by Dr Veronika Sandbichler:
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https://www.artes-exhibition.digital/de/kolowrat-hochzeit/
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