Oil on canvas. The visit of Holy Roman Emperor Matthias I in 1612 was an opportunity for Nuremberg's City Council to show off its best side. Three years earlier, the city had joined the Protestant Union, and now it had to make up for that affront to the Catholic emperor. The painting shows the emperor's jubilant entry at the moment when he has just come through the magnificent triumphal arch specially built for the occasion below the city's Imperial Castle. Slightly behind follows his wife, the Empress Anna, in a splendid coach. A crowd of citizens hail the imperial couple from both sides of their path. To enhance the painting's drama, Paul Ritter has indulged in a rather noticeable bit of poetic license: everyone is shown coming down from the castle, even though when the emperor "entered" Nuremberg he would of course have been traveling in exactly the opposite direction.