"The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is home to one of the world's most important collections of early Netherlandish painting. The origin of those rich holdings can be traced back to 1477, when the Burgundian Netherlands became a Habsburg possession on Mary of Burgundy's marriage to Archduke Maximilian of Austria. Imperial Treasures. Masterpieces from the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna is the fruit of the outstanding exhibition of the same name at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges. The book is devoted to a unique selection of fifteenth and sixteenth-century masterpieces from the Low Countries in the museum's collection. In a series of essays by leading scholars, it explores the history of the collection and the emergence of the various pictorial genres. The exceptionally early development of history, portrait, landscape and genre painting in the Low Countries laid the foundations for the unprecedented flowering of both Flemish and Dutch painting in the seventeenth century."--Publisher's website.