Artist unknown

Allegory on the Domus Austriae (1580–85)

Photo: Nordico Stadtmuseum Linz

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Domus Austriae (House of Austria): for a very long time in Austrian history, this name designated neither a specific territory nor an ethnicity but the allegiance to the transnational House of Habsburg. That explains this painting’s peculiar, geography-defying hierarchy: Austria (as Pallas Athena) is depicted as rising above both Europe and Africa.

On the right-hand obelisk (with the inscription manebit: “he/she/it will remain”), the hand of God testifies to Austria’s lasting dominance and points to the Roman eagle and the laurel of victory. The obelisk on the left (immota: “unchanged, immovable”) depicts figures symbolizing various threats: the king of rival France, the Ottoman Turks, Jews, and Indigenous peoples of the Americas then under Spanish Habsburg rule.

Oil on canvas, 90.5 × 123.5 cm

Nordico Stadtmuseum Linz

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