Seite - 23 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Band 1

23The Image—Or from Whom (Not?) to Buy a Second-Hand Car World of the same year.42 Svátek himself was largely responsible for this leg- end, and he continued to draw upon it for his historical novels, in one of which at least, Astrolog of 1891–1892, the three Stradas—Jacopo, Ottavio and ‘Donna Katharina’—play an important role.43 The Czech legend of Rudolf ii crossed the Atlantic in 1904, when the Ameri- can chemist and bibliographer Henry Carrington Bolton in his The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolf ii told the history of the alchemical experiments attempted at Rudolf’s court from the point of view of the positivist scientist, as the title indicates. He merely mentions Jacopo Strada as the man responsi- ble for the development of Rudolf’s Kunstkammer, and ‘Katharina’ is not even mentioned by name, though she figures prominently in the frontispiece, a print of Václav Brožík’s painting Rodolphe chez son alchimiste that had likewise crossed the Atlantic, and hung in the entrance of New York’s Lenox Library [Fig. 0.14].44 42 Ripellino 1973; Evans 1973. 43 Svátek 1891–1892, pp. 300 ff., pp. 474 ff., and passim. It is inevitable that these misconcep- tions continue to flourish. On the internet Katharina has taken on a new lease on life, and her ‘father’ has expanded his career by running a high-class brothel in Prague. 44 Bolton 1904 pp. 53–60. ‘In company with Strada, Rudolph spent entire days in the cabi- nets, devoting his nights to his astrologers and alchemists’. Bolton acknowledged his debt Figure 0.14 Václav Brožík, Rudolph with his Alchemist, engraving by Armand Mathey after  a painting a reproduction of which served as the frontispiece to Henry Carrington Bolton, The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolf ii, 1904.