Printing Plate with Venus, Bacchus, Ceres and Amor

Beginning in the sixteenth century, drawings and copperplate engravings were collected as artworks in their own right. Rudolf II also had numerous copper printing plates, including some by Albrecht Dürer. What is unusual about the present plate is its execution in silver and also the decoration of the ivory tableau, which is in keeping with that of a graphic reproduction. The Tableau probably entered the Prague Kunstkammer as a gift of the Duke of Bavaria.