This issue of Central European History may at first seem some-what unexpected. All the following papers pertain to the early modern period. All of them moreover originated in connection with an exhibition of works of art, “Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire, 1540–1680. A Selection from North American Collections,” its published catalogue, and a symposium, “The Culture of the Holy Roman Empire, 1540–1680,” held on the occasion of the exhibition's opening. The papers published in this issue are accordingly essays in art, literary, intellectual, and, more generally, cultural history; some words may be needed to explain how they come to appear here now.

Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire 1540–1680 must have appeared to the untutored eye as a fairly miscellaneous exhibition of drawings, themselves a very miscellaneous genre. Perhaps their only common ground lies in that even more ineffable geographical expression: the Holy Roman Empire. Yet for all the accidental quality of its provenance, the show possessed a certain logic. Let us note two crude facts about it: firstly the threefold and almost equal division between religious and classical subjects and a third group of “modern” topics, landscape and genre—what might be called the new “inquisitive eye”; secondly the clear focus on the years around 1600 and the area of southern Germany and Bohemia. To both of these aspects I shall return in due course.

In 1713 and 1715 Johann Burkhard Mencke subjected the scholars of the Holy Roman Empire to a searching examination. They failed it. His two speeches “On the Charlatanry of the Learned”—best sellers wherever they were not banned—ridiculed the minds and the mores of the polyhistors with equal zest. Mencke anatomized their love for overblown titles:

Today … you see many demanding to be called Clarissimus who are absolutely unknown outside the walls of their city; Magnificus, who have scarcely any dignity at home; Consultissimus, who have little or no advice to give: and Excellentissimus, who do not know as much about anything worth knowing as the veriest tyro.

Seventeenth-century literature in the Holy Roman Empire has rarely been discussed in general cultural histories about the European Baroque. The dramatic achievements of Shakespeare, Calderon, and Corneille, the inimitable poetry of the Metaphysicals and Marino and the mischievous adventures of the Spanish picaro have long overshadowed the literary accomplishments of the German Baroque. Even today many scholars are still content to dismiss the German seventeenth century as derivative while, in the opposite camp, loyal Germanists currently defend its uniqueness. As is generally known, literary developments in the Empire were slowed by a number of unfortunate circumstances. Geographical, confessional, and linguistic disunity strongly contributed to the parochialism of German Baroque letters. Local literary societies were widely scattered throughout the Empire from Silesia to the Rhine and communication between them was greatly hampered. The lack of a main cultural center similar to the artistic hubs of Paris or London further isolated the writers from each other. In addition, confessional differences not only segregated Catholic and Protestant poets, but also resulted in the simultaneous development of a Batoque Latin and German literature.

The following checklist contains references to drawings by artists active in the lands comprised by the Holy Roman Empire, 1540–1680, regardless of their place of birth. All drawings found in North American collections of which the compiler is aware have been included. This census is intended to complement the exhibition and catalogue Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire 1540–1680: A Selection from North American Collections (Princeton, 1982). The choice of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation as a framework for the selection of drawings is explained in “Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire 1540–1680: An Essay Toward Historical Understanding” (ibid., 3–30). An asterisk (*) marks works that were presented in the exhibition, and discussed at length in the accompanying catalogue.