In Germany, as elsewhere, success in trade resulted in a demand for
objects of luxury. The city of Augsburg, situated on a great trade
route, early attained to a height of commercial prosperity, while
Munich, and especially Nuremberg, not far distant, flourished to an
equal degree. Under the stimulating patronage of wealthy families, such
as the Fugger family of Augsburg, articles of jewellery of every kind
were produced in abundance, and throughout the sixteenth century found
their way over nearly the whole of Europe. In addition to these three
cities, Prague during the last few years of the sixteenth and the
commencement of the seventeenth century was likewise a centre for the
manufacture of an immense amount of enamelled jewellery. This industry,
carried on with considerable activity owing to the influence of the
Archduke Ferdinand of Tirol (1520-1595), brother of Maximilian II, was
most flourishing in the time of the Emperor Rudolph II (1552-1612),
King of Hungary and Bohemia, under whose patronage several remarkable
specimens of German goldsmith's work now at Vienna were executed, such
as the Austrian Imperial Crown, made in the year 1602.
The epoch of about forty years that terminated at the death of
Rudolph II in 1612, and known as the Rudolphine period, witnessed the
production, mainly in Southern Germany, of the greater part of the
enamelled jewellery now extant. Renaissance jewellery, as we speak of
it, may be said to have almost ceased after that period, at a date which
coincided with the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, and the
Civil War in England.
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