Stamboom van het Habsburgse huis (tweede blad)

This large-scale engraving organizes the lineage of the Habsburg family into a literal arboreal structure, with branches supporting individual portraits and couple groupings. Each figure is identified by a Latin inscription on a curling scroll and is accompanied by their family’s coat of arms. The work functions as a visual record of dynastic power, framing the history of the Holy Roman Empire as an organic, unfolding growth.

Aegidius Sadeler was the principal engraver at the court of Rudolf II in Prague, a center for Renaissance occultism and natural philosophy; this genealogy reflects the Imperial preoccupation with divine lineage and the preservation of universal order. The tree motif mirrors symbolic structures found in the Western tradition, such as the Porphyrian tree or the Sephirothic tree, suggesting a macrocosmic harmony within the micro-history of a single family.