Home » Images » 0073 Pictures From History » CPA0036422

Germany: Maximilian I (1459-1519), 29th Holy Roman emperor, with his wife Mary of Burgundy, and his son Philip, from Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages and at the Period of the Renaissance by Paul Lacroix / P.L. Jacob (1806-1884), 1870

Maximilian I (22 March 1459 – 12 January 1519), the son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, and Eleanor of Portugal, was King of the Romans (also known as King of the Germans) from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death, though he was never in fact crowned by the Pope, the journey to Rome always being too risky.

He had ruled jointly with his father for the last ten years of his father's reign, from c. 1483. He expanded the influence of the House of Habsburg through war and his marriage in 1477 to Mary of Burgundy, the heiress to the Duchy of Burgundy, but he also lost the Austrian territories in today's Switzerland to the Swiss Confederacy.