Emperor Maximilian I
1459-1515
Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek


Maximilian viewed himself as the "True Renaissance Prince." Historians have tended to see him as something of a Don Quixote for his veneration of chivalry and his many failures in warfare. Surnamed der letzte Ritter—"the last of the knights"—he wrote or supervised the writing of some thirty books that preserve much of our knowledge of chivalric arms and culture.