Reading these articles in our AHY Forum brought back a flood of memories to my last days as a university undergraduate at Emory University when I first encountered Emperor Rudolf II and Renaissance Prague in a course taught by the late James Allen Vann. What captivates us about the past? What prompts naive undergraduates to take that fateful step and pursue a PhD in history? For me, it was simply Rudolf. I was not alone. The quizzical emperor ensconced in his castle high above the city has intrigued the imaginations of many. There is certainly irony in this, for Rudolf as an emperor was no success. He ended his reign an ineffective ruler browbeaten by his own brother to abdicate as king of Bohemia. But if he failed politically, there were lasting triumphs elsewhere. Rudolf's contemporary, the Flemish painter and theoretician Karel van Mander, famously pointed to Prague and the emperor as the “greatest art patron in the world.” And what emperor can boast that his most acclaimed “likeness” was a collage of fruits and vegetables, a portrait executed by a student of Leonardo da Vinci?

在我们的AHY中阅读这些文章当我在已故詹姆斯·艾伦·范恩（James Allen Vann）教授的一门课程中首次遇到鲁道夫二世皇帝和布拉格文艺复兴时期时，论坛让我回想起了当初在埃默里大学读大学时的回忆。是什么让我们着迷于过去？是什么促使天真的本科生迈出了决定性的一步，并攻读历史博士学位？对我来说，简直就是鲁道夫。我并不孤单。这座高高耸立在这座高高在上的城堡中的古怪皇帝吸引了许多人的想像力。当然有讽刺意味，因为作为皇帝的鲁道夫没有成功。他结束了他的统治，一个无效的统治者被自己的兄弟殴打，退位为波西米亚国王。但是，如果他在政治上失败了，其他地方就会取得持久的胜利。鲁道夫（Rudolf）的当代画家，佛兰德画家和理论家Karel van Mander，著名地指出布拉格和皇帝是“世界上最大的艺术赞助人”。哪个皇帝可以吹嘘他最广受赞誉的“肖像”是水果和蔬菜的拼贴画，这是达芬奇学生的肖像？