«Giving away the moulds will cause no damage to his Majesty’s casts»: New Documents on the Vienna Jüngling and the Sixteenth-Century Dissemination of Casts after the Antique in the Holy Roman Empire

On the basis of new evidence, this paper will reassess our understanding of the sixteenth-century diffusion of casting from the antique beyond the Alps. In particular, it will raise two points so far underplayed. Firstly, it will highlight the privotal role played by Mary of Habsburg and her diplomacy in disseminating bronze and plaster casts from the antique not only into the Low Countries, but also within the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. As a consequence, the sixteenth-century dissemination of this form of collecting will appear significantly more articulated than one might imagine. Secondly, the paper will argue that the role of courtiers and European allies who shared with the Valois and the Habsburgs an interest in collecting antiquities, and therefore accepted new forms of substitutive casts, should also be considered significant. Certain Habsburg courtiers, such as the Minister Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, took the initiative of commissioning plaster casts from the antique independently and at the same time as their rulers. This activity allows us to reassess the common view of sixteenth-century cast commissions as exclusive to the patronage of royal dynasties.