Paulus Roy (active 1587–1608),Triple Portrait of Ferdinand I (1503–1564), Maximilian II (1527–1576), and Rudolf II (1552–1612), Oil on panel, 55 × 44 cm, Prague Castle Picture Gallery
This extraordinary painting by Paulus Roy, a little-known artist active in Prague during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, is among the earliest and most sophisticated examples of a grid-based optical portrait—a tabula scalata or ‘turning picture’—to incorporate not just two, but three separate royal portraits within a single panel. The three Habsburg emperors—Ferdinand I, Maximilian II, and Rudolf II—are rendered in thin vertical strips, interwoven in such a way that each portrait becomes visible only when viewed from a particular angle.
Ferdinand I (1503–1564), Holy Roman Emperor from 1558, had served earlier as King of Bohemia and Hungary and was instrumental in bringing Habsburg rule to the Bohemian crown. Maximilian II (1527–1576), his son, reigned as Emperor from 1564 and is remembered for his moderate religious policies and his patronage of humanist scholarship. Rudolf II (1552–1612), Maximilian’s son, moved the imperial court to Prague in 1583 and made the city into one of the most important artistic and scientific centres in Europe, attracting astronomers, alchemists, and painters to his court.
The tabula scalata technique developed in the mid-sixteenth century as part of the broader Renaissance interest in perspective, perception, and visual riddles. To integrate three distinct likenesses, the artist had to subdivide the surface into a finely calculated matrix of narrow vertical strips, assigning alternating intervals of each emperor’s portrait while maintaining recognisable physiognomies at a distance. This level of complexity made triple tabulae scalatae extraordinarily rare.
