Scarcely had Rudolf II been buried C without the usual honours C in the crypt of St Vitus's Cathedral at Prague Castle, when his famous collections began to meet their sad fate. The news of their legendary size and rarity had spread across Europe, and it comes as no surprise, therefore, that they aroused the interest not only of the Emperor's relatives but also of the Bohemian estates. Because of the enormous wealth the collections represented they were destined to become sought after war trophies or the reward for military services rendered. Thus it also comes as no surprise that they were affected not only by the events that immediately preceded the Thirty Years War, but also, and above all, by what took place in the lands of the Bohemian crown during that protracted conflict.

Rudolf II had wanted his collections to become an inseparable part of the family fortune C the Habsburg Kunstkammer, which his brother Matthias, the next Emperor, would also have liked to ensure. [1] Other brothers, the archduke Maximilian III and particularly Albrecht VII, also, however, demanded their inheritance. The financial settlement they had strived for finally came to them in the form of jewels and of art objects made of precious metals. The brothers also endeavoured to obtain works of art C although >less important' pieces, for they, too, admitted that the most valuable objects of the collections ought to remain a permanent part of the House of Habsburg's property. [2] Their wish was granted, and in late 1615 or early 1616 Jacques de Zélandre brought Archduke Albrecht in Brussels rare jewels, furniture, astronomical instruments and other objects from the Rudolfine collections. [3] The shipment were also 115 pictures, among whose authors mentioned by name were Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian and Veronese. [4] Its estimated total value, 13,000 talers, was not so low, as the historian Lhotsky presumed, that these pictures could be considered copies, as would have corresponded to the original, apparently modest wish. [5] The list and appraisal were executed by Hans von Peltt and by Rudolf's former court painter, Jeremias Günther, who knew the collection well, was able to tell a copy from an original, and competent in estimating their true value. The estimated costs were, therefore, between 15 and 500 tolars. [6] Clara Garas indentified some items on this list of Albrecht's inheritance from Rudolf, and, among other things, she traced the fate of one them C namely, Tintoretto's depiction of Hercules and the Faun. Thanks to her work, we now know of the astonishing changes of fortune experienced by some of the art works from the Rudolfine collections. [7] Perhaps because of a lack of money, perhaps because of the excessively frivolous subject matter, part of Albrecht's inheritance made its way to the Buckingham collection in England; when it was sold in 1650, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm acquired it for Emperor Ferdinand III. So, after almost four centuries, some of the art works of Rudolf's collections returned to the places they had originally adorned at Prague Castle. [8]

Rudolf's collections were also meant to serve as part of the settlement of the enormous debt Rudolf had left [9]; and, apart from the Emperor's relatives, the Bohemian estates were also interested in the collections. In his dispatch of 5 November 1612, Soranzo, the Venetian Ambassador to the court of the Emperor, mentions the estates' belief that at least part of the collections, for instance the Emperor's new crown, had been paid for with monies from the Chamber of the Bohemian Court. [10] The danger of possible confiscation was met by Emperor Matthias by locking up the collections and their custodians, and at once clandestinely removing the most precious items to Vienna. In his reports from Prague Soranzo provides equally valuable information about the collections immediately after Rudolf's death. He writes about their size and appraised worth, and that Matthias had locked himself up with them in order to become thoroughly acquainted with the treasures he had inherited and then to decide their fate. [11] On 5 March 1612 Soranzo informed Venice that works of art have been taken from various parts of the palace and placed in piles, that is to say, that they were undoubtedly being prepared for removal to Vienna. [12] This is also confirmed by the Viennese >Inventory G', which is believed to have been made in the years 1610C19. [13] This must have taken place at the earliest in 1612, after Rudolf's death, because the list mentions pictures and other works of art from the collections of Prague Castle, for instance Spranger's cycle of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Heintz's copy of Parmigianino's Cupid Carving His Bow. [14] Apart from the pictures listed individually on the basis of other well-made and trustworthy documents, the list, under item No. 83, also mentions, in a most general way, fortyBthree items: >Nachvolgunde stuckh seind nicht engefast und liegen auf der erden aufeinander, wie sie der ordnung nach alhier beschrieben werden [...]' (The following pieces have not been included and lie upon one another on the ground in the order in which they have been described here). From that it can be deduced that this was a new shipment from Prague, which was awaiting a more thorough sorting, framing and dignified setting. [15] The individual items were described only in the Viennese >Inventory H' (made after 28 June 1619), which also contained other objects from Prague Castle. [16] This list invites reflection upon Matthias's taste, preferences and thoughts about the value of some of these works, because it provides evidence of what he had ordered removed from Prague to Vienna. The great quantity of pictures by Rudolfine masters testifies to his having placed great value on Rudolf's artists, some of whom he retained in his own service. He had removed to Vienna an equally large number of works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Albrecht Dürer as well as paintings by Tintoretto and Veronese, and he was also interested in miniatures and embroidered pictures, works by the van den Bossche family.

Matthias clearly did not desire that the painstakingly made inventories of Rudolf's collections, which were meant to provide an overview of the collections' true size and value, get into the hands of just anybody. It seems most likely that he let the men who had made the Viennese inventories >G' and >H' peruse the inventories of Rudolf's collections, and that they then took the necessary information from these lists. It is also possible, however, that they had at their disposal only the list made on the basis of Matthias's order that Pruskovskù, Adam von Waldstein the Younger, and Barvitius take a new inventory, which would then serve chiefly as an appraisal of the collections' worth; this inventory is, unfortunately, no longer extant. [17] We know the estimated total value, seventeen million guilders, only because it was reported by Pavel Skála ze Zhoř. [18] It undoubtedly omits works that had in the meantime been taken to Vienna.

Emperor Matthias probably did not want to remove Rudolf's entire collection to Vienna once he had made that city the imperial seat. Indeed, he had no intention of omitting Prague from his plans, and as early as March 1613, he ordered the reconstruction of the New Palace at Prague Castle. This project comprised raising two parts of the palace by another storey, and unifying them by means of a new facade and single roof. Matthias hurried with the construction work, to be able to live in the building by the time he convened the assembly. [19] Before the project could begin, it was probably necessary to vacate the part of the imperial apartments which had housed the collections since the days of Rudolf II. Together with the collections' removal to Vienna, the construction work greatly disrupted the collections' organization. The movement of objects made it difficult to recall their original location and allowed them to disappear uncontrolled from Prague Castle. Apart from the transfer to Vienna and the distribution between the late emperor's heirs, objects from Rudolf's collections were also presented as gifts to loyal supporters of the new emperor. [20]

As the conflict intensified between the Protestants and Roman Catholics intensified in the Bohemian lands, so grew the threat to the treasures of Prague Castle. It becomes clear from a report by the Saxon envoy to Prague, F. Lebzelter, dated 8 September 1619, that the Commission of the Bohemian estates, led by two directors, Popel z Lobkovic and Lord Švamberk, had ordered a new inventory made, which was intended as documentation during the sale of the imperial collections, to raise money to pay for the mercenaries of the estates' armies. [21] At the August assembly of that year Václav z Roupova delivered the fiery address that would lead to this decision:

"Es verbleiben daselbst noch immer genug Kunstschatze zur Kurzweil und Belustigung des kunftigen Konigs; vor Allem aber verwandle man in baares Geld jenen silbernen Brunnen, der im Werthe von Million dem Kaiser Rudolf vom Fursten Liechtenstein fur die Verleihung des furstlichen Titels verehrt worden, weiter die silbernen Schreibtische, Uhren und andere ahnliche Dinge. Die Bilder und Malereien, von welchen viele durch unverschamte Darstellung nackter Korpertheile den menschlichen Geist mehr beleidigen als erfrischen, mogen gleichfalls von Malern abgeschatzt und an Nurnberger Kaufleute verpfandet werden." [22]

The inventory prepared from late August to late October 1619 contains a list of objects deposited in the Kunstkammer. [23] It entirely lacks pictures whose listing was evidently entrusted to another group comprising painters. Comparison with the inventory of 1607-11 allows one to determine what was taken from Prague to Vienna or elsewhere after the death of Rudolf, and to know the content of the collections deposited in rooms other than the hall of the Kunstkammer. [24] The most interesting information is, however, provided by the estimated values of individual works listed in the 1619 inventory. Although the Bohemian estates had not managed to sell off Rudolf's collections, they did manage to use part of them as payment for the promised support. In September 1619 Count Thurn presented Gábor Bethlen and the highest ranking officers of his army with rare gifts, including magnificent Turkish saddles, broadswords, sabres and other similar objects. [25] A look into the inventory of 1619 reveals why these things in particular were chosen: their value far surpassed that of similar European products; they were gifts literally fit for a king.

On 31 October 1619 Frederick of the Palatinate, who had just been elected King of Bohemia, rode into Prague for his coronation, which was to take place in St Vitus's Cathedral four days later. He does not seem to have immediately tried to sell off the collections to be able to pay his soldiers. Prague Castle, full of wonderful treasures, undoubtedly met with his expectations of the grand royal seat he wished to live in. The Battle of the White Mountain, 8 November 1620, suddenly dashed that dream. Frederick was not prepared for the sudden flight from Prague; his servants managed to pack only the most necessary things for the journey, and so one of the Emperor's soldiers found even his Order of the Garter at the Castle, a distinction he had received from his father-in-law, James I. [26] The Castle inventory at the time was also enriched by objects that that Frederick of the Palatine and his wife, Elizabeth of England, had brought with them to Prague: various portraits, expensive china and probably other, unspecified items. [27] The hastily loaded wagons that were meant to follow the defeated king on his flight to Breslau (Wroclaw) did not manage to leave Prague Castle, and so became the trophies of the victor of the Battle of the White Mountain, Maximilian of Bavaria. After his triumph in Prague, however, Maximilian did not stay long, leaving for Munich on 17 November; but he did not forget his bountiful booty. Pavel Skála ze ZhoÞe, an eyewitness, writes about the 1,500 wagons laden with treasures from Prague, which included six tonnes of gold. [28] This estimate may have been excessively high, and, moreover, the booty was certainly of a varied nature. The wagons contained not only items from the imperial collections but also from many a nobleman's palace, and included, in particular, work by artisans, and undoubtedly also paintings and sculpture. One example is Aachen's Allegory of Truth and Justice, exhibited today in the Alte Pinakothek; it most certainly comes from the Prague booty, because it was painted for Rudolf II, not for the painter's previous patron, Wilhelm V of Bavaria. [29]

On his arrival in Prague, Maximilian of Bavaria placed the administration of the Bohemian lands into the hands of Karl von Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein was also a lover of art and a collector, and the collections at Prague Castle greatly attracted him. He could now make up for the losses he suffered when Rudolf II had demanded various works of art and books from him at his schloß in Aussee. [30] Liechtenstein was probably thinking about this occurrence of 1597 when, many years later, he borrowed a number of pictures and tapestries from the imperial collections on the pretext of wanting to have copies made C he certainly did not rush to return them. Only after Karl von Liechtenstein's death did Emperor Ferdinand II urge Karl's brothers, Gundacker and Maximilian, on 5 December 1627, to return the borrowed works to the Kunstkammer. They, however, demanded that the imperial custodian (Schatzmeister), Karl Hans König, send them a list of the borrowed items, because none of Karl's former servants remembered which items had come from Prague Castle, and some had apparently already been returned; they claimed, moreover, that none of the tapestries were from the imperial collections and that those in their possession were part of the war trophies. No record of further negotiations on this matter survive, and we do not know how it was concluded. [31] In connection with these reports, we can easily understand why the same Karl von Liechtenstein was in no hurry to have a new inventory of Rudolf's collections made, why he did not order one until December 1621, and why the only surviving original inventory of Rudolf's collections was deposited in Liechtenstein's archive. [32] A list from 1619 and some works of art from the Castle evidently followed similarly strange paths into the collections of the Silesian branch of the Nostitz family. [33]

Ferdinand II treated the collections of Prague Castle as freely as Emperor Matthias had. He behaved similarly to the way that had been suggested by the Bohemian Protestant estates as early as 1619. Paintings of mythological and allegorical subject matter, which seemed to him too frivolous, were sold to Daniel de Briers in 1623. [34] That same year, Ferdinand made a gift of several vessels of precious stones to archduke Leopold Wilhelm. He also gave away rare textiles and various trappings to Prague convents and monasteries, and presented the Jesuits with books. The grand burgrave was rewarded for loyal service, as was the superintendent of Prague Castle, Karl Hans König. [35] These are but a few of the documented examples; many more persons, particularly the high-ranking officers and top-level bureaucrats, were, of course, rewarded for their help in restoring Habsburg rule in the Bohemian lands.

During the Thirty Years War, Prague was often threatened with military operations, including occupation by enemy troops. This represented an immediate danger to the Castle collections, for they were enticing booty, and the Castle superintendent König, together with the treasurer, Dionysio Miseroni (from 1630, Schatzmeisteradjunkt, and from 1634, Schatzmeister) had to ensure their protection. The continuous transfer of the collections from one hiding place to another damaged the art works, and made it extremely difficult to keep track of the number of items and their location. In 1631, when Prague was threatened with occupation by the troops of Saxony, König fled to Vienna with part of the collection. [36] A year later he returned to Prague Castle, where he had to face the serious charge that he had embezzled valuable works of art. For more than ten years he tried to prove that this was a false allegation, and after his death his family continued the struggle. The archive records related to this case are fascinating for a number of reasons. The list of items that König took to Vienna in 1631 make clear which works were given priority in the effort to save them. [37] One entry summarily states: >mehr sechsundsiebenzig der schonsten kunststuckh, von den kunstreichen meistern gemahlt' (more than seventy-six of the most beautiful works of art, painted by gifted masters). The books in which rare drawings and prints (including works by Dürer) had been bound were listed individually with an indication, though general, of the subject matter. Also sent to Vienna at the time were a number of vessels made of precious stones, as well as other objects, including silverwork, miniatures, Turkish weapons, and portraits in wax. Together with Matthias's shipments to Vienna and Albrecht's share of the inheritance, it was clearly one of the largest transfers of works of art ever to leave Prague, whereby mostly works of Italian masters and German and Netherlandish painters of the sixteenth century, changed their location. Today they are the pride of the Kunsthistorishes Museum in Vienna.

In his defence, König presented a list of objects that had been found after the flight of the Elector Palatine, Frederick, from Prague Castle. The list mentions what the Emperor had ordered sent to Vienna while keeping part for himself and using part >zu einem turkischen praesent' (as a Turkish present). [38] Most of what remained in Vienna was given to König as a gift >for loyal service'. His decision to remove part of the collection to Vienna proved to be provident, because what he had fled from in anticipation suddenly, in fact, occurred. The occupation of the Castle by Saxon troops lasted from 15 November 1631 to 25 May 1632, and meant another great loss for the Rudolfine collections. On 20 November 1631 the elector of Saxony came to Prague; he soon gave the order that more than fifty wagons be filled with precious objects from the Castle and sent to Dresden. [39] Nor did the imperial armory escape the attention of the Saxon troops; the following year heavy cannons and sets of cannons known as >organs' (Orgel), which linked together twenty medium-large barrels, were removed to Saxony.

After the charge of embezzlement, König called for a check of the collections in order to prove his innocence. As is clear from the extant reports, since 1621, when a new inventory of the gallery and the Kunstkammer was carried out, no further inventory of them was taken. [40] The request for the review was met only in 1635 C just after König's death (in 1634). As they stated in their document, the auditors found that a total of 310 objects were not in their proper place, whereas an additional 517 items that had not been included in the 1621 inventory were now discovered. Using a complicated comparison of various documents, König's heirs managed to demonstrate what had happened to most of the missing pieces, and they expressed the hope that the rest of the lost items would soon be found when the next inventory was taken. [41] It seems, therefore, that the 1621 inventory was not as precise as it should have been, because it had neglected items located outside the gallery spaces. In the Spanish Hall, that is to say, in what is today Rudolf's gallery, some of Veronese's allegorical paintings were found; they had, it seems, originally decorated a room of the Emperor's palace, along with Archimboldo's Vertumnus, a painting that had probably also hung in Rudolf's chambers. [42]

The extent to which the losses suffered during the occupation of the Castle were recorded is, unfortunately, not clear from the records related to König's case. As the clerk entrusted with the management of the collections, he made note of the objects intended as gifts, and, when possible, mentioned also the persons or purposes for which they were intended. What is remarkable, however, is that when he endeavoured to carry out a check of the collections, König urgently demanded also the presentation of the inventory, because in the Kunstkammer no >in forma probante' was found upon which to base the control. In 1621 only two copies were prepared, one of which the Emperor kept for himself, and the other was probably in Vienna. [43] The curators of the collections did not, therefore, have at their disposal a list into which they could note down all the changes, that is to say, removals, transfers, gifts and losses. This must have been intentional: the less known about the collections and their contents, the easier to dispose of them as one wished. Moreover, even after the experience of König's accusation no new inventory was made to record the status quo. Dionysio Miseroni could still complain in 1645 that ever since he had been named Schatzmeisteradjunkt in 1630 (and then, after König's death, Schatzmeister) he never received an official inventory of the Kunstkammer and that he could not, despite his best intentions, bear responsibility for their contents in the period before he had been entrusted with its keys (that is, before 1634). [44] The voluminous correspondence between Prague and the Emperor in Vienna led to a definitive solution to the problem only in 1647, when an order was finally given to take a new inventory [45] C this, paradoxically, recorded the state of the collections shortly before the Swedish invasion of Prague, and eventually served General Königsmark as a record of his abundant booty. Before that happened, however, Dionysio Miseroni, too, had several times sent a shipment of art works to Vienna, and twice (according to the records, in 1639 and 1642), he faced the imminent Swedish occupation of Prague Castle by hiding the collections. [46] When the danger had passed, they were returned to the Kunstkammer C but, as is clear from a comparison of the data from 1635 and 1648, they were not returned to their original places on tables and in cabinets and chests. Any control of the state of the collections was thereafter made more difficult, if not impossible. Their peace and quiet was not enhanced by the extensive reconstruction of the >Long Building', that is, the wing between the second and third courtyards. In 1642C43, for the needs of the female retinue of the Emperor, the architect Giuseppe Mathei adapted the buildings behind the Romanesque wall; the work included linking them with a unified facade and re-designing the interiors. This new part of the imperial palace was joined to the building in front of the Romanesque wall, to the rooms of the Kunstkammer and the gallery. Their original function, however, remained untouched by the architectural changes. [47]

The logical culmination of the story of the Rudolfine collections in the Thirty Years War was brought about by one of the last military operations before the signing of the Peace of Westphalia. On 26 July, less than three months before the signing of the peace, Swedish divisions under General Königsmark occupied Prague Castle and the Lesser Town. This military operation could in no way have changed the balance of forces or created a better starting point for negotiations. It seems, therefore, that its chief aim was to capture the collections for the art-loving Swedish queen, Christiana, who had heard about their greatness in Stockholm. Under threat of torture, the treasurer, Miseroni, had to relinquish to Königsmark the inventory and keys to the Kunstkammer. And so, what had endured undisturbed in its rooms for thirty-six years after the death of Rudolf was now to be transferred to Sweden. [48]

Two inventories published by the historian Dudík in 1867 are eloquent testimony to these events. [49] Whereas >Inventory A' is identical with the one Königsmark forced Miseroni to hand over, which described the state of the Kunstkammer in late 1647 and early 1648, the other, >Inventory B', constitutes (as is clear from its heading) the inventory of the Kunstkammer carried out between 31 August and 10 (or 12) September 1648. Prague Castle was at the time already occupied by the Swedes, which is why the second list can be considered a control by Königsmark, to check whether Miseroni was not concealing anything essential, and to ensure that his queen was not being cheated. It is also much more concise, tending rather to concentrate on quantity. Moreover, in the first inventory, where Rudolf is respectfully mentioned as >His Majesty the Emperor' (>Ihr Kays. Mays. Rudolpho'), >Inventory B' makes mention merely of >Emperor Rudolf'. In the second half of September, Königsmark's people began to pack the collections and prepare them for transport to Sweden. The operation was undoubtedly undertaken in haste, because the signing of the peace was to occur in a matter of days. The packing may have been done even before 24 October (the signing of the Peace of Westphalia), but the only thing we can know for certain is the route the collections took C the precious booty was transported by land and by water to Dömitz, a small fortress at Mecklenburg; from there it travelled on to Wismar, where it had to remain through the winter. In early April, Queen Christiana was urging that her trophies be immediately transported to Sweden, but only in late May 1649 could the art-loving queen finally admire the treasures from Prague in her royal palace at Stockholm. [50] A Swedish garrison remained at Prague Castle until 9 September 1649, that is, for nearly a year after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia. In light of recent research it seems that the Swedes removed all the paintings they found at the time, apart from those that were damaged. [51] Among them, for instance, were Dürer's Feast of the Rosaries [52] and a work by a pupil of Giulio Romano, a painting of the Rape of the Sabine Women, which some Swedish soldier had hacked up with his sword. [53] To Stockholm were sent all the sculptures capable of enduring the long and difficult journey, that is, works in bronze (by de Vries, Giambologna, Leoni) and some in marble. Sculptures of stucco, terra-cotta or plaster remained where they were, as did a number of objects in the rooms of the Kunstkammer, various oriental items, parts of the zoological and mineralogical collections, and also the astronomical instruments. Some of the more valuable items, including those of ivory or wax, were probably saved by Miseroni, who must have managed to hide them just before the occupation. [54]

When Rudolf's collections finally made their way to Stockholm in May 1649, the manner they were handled barely changed. In a letter to the Duke of Bracciano, written in 1653, Queen Christiana complained that although she may have acquired a vast and beautiful collection, which contained a number of universally admired works by Dürer and other German masters, she was not particularly taken with any, except for thirty or forty Italian paintings, and would gladly have exchanged the lot for two by Raphael. [55] Later, when she converted to Roman Catholicism and secretly left her country for Italy, she took with her only two pictures, both by Italian masters. The remainder she left to her successor on the throne, but also gave away or sold a number of pieces. [56]

One can scarcely imagine a sadder end for Rudolf's renowned collections. The works that had not been removed to Vienna were eventually scattered across Europe. But, the rooms of Rudolf's gallery and Kunstkammer did not remain empty for long; as early as 1650 a large part of the once equally important collection of Lord Buckingham was bought in Antwerp for Ferdinand II by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. We do not know whether they were aware that with this collection they were acquiring for Prague works that had once resided in this city. [57] But no kinder a fate awaited the new collection of Prague Castle than that of its predecessors. Although it had been untouched by war, transfer to Vienna robbed the collection of its more important pieces, while the sale to Dresden of a large set of paintings helped to replenish Empress Theresa's badly depleted coffers. During her reign the gallery and the Kunstkammer at Prague Castle were closed, and the paintings were reduced to being mere decoration in the palace's state rooms. [58] Many >uninteresting or damaged things' then went up on the block in the auction organized, in 1782, by Maria Theresa's son and heir to the throne, Joseph II. In this way, the last remnants of the Rudolfine collections departed Prague Castle and were dispersed around the world. [59] And these were by no means negligible remnants; one need only recall, for instance, the famous classical torso Ilioneus, or Dürer's Feast of the Rosaries. Only in rare cases did the individual pieces of Rudolf's collections that had remained in the Bohemian lands stay at Prague Castle. Among them were Heintz's Last Judgement, a copy of Augsburg's Geschlechtertanz, Aachen's portrait of a girl or Spranger's Allegory of the Fate of the Sculptor Mont. [60] Stevens's Landscape with a Mill was ordered moved to Vienna by Emperor Matthias, and was returned to Prague only in the nineteenth century. [61] Many works made their way into the collections of noblemen or of the Church by purchase or other, less official paths. [62] Particularly interesting were the peregrinations of objects that had endured in the Kunstkammer up until the auction in 1782, and then remained in Prague only thanks to two professors, Zauschner and Herget, who had chosen them as teaching aids. [63] Only a few books were regained from Sweden; and after the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in the wake of World War I, part of Rudolf's collections at Prague Castle were, paradoxically, transferred from Vienna to Budapest as part of the peace settlement. [64]

An attempt to reconstruct what had once filled the rooms of the gallery, the Kunstkammer, and Rudolf's palace at Prague Castle can never be perfect. [65] The extant archive records, though painstakingly deposited, can never fill in the gaps in the picture that resulted from the destruction incurred by so many stormy events. After Rudolf died, there was no one who, with the same engagement, could take his place and continue his work and see to it that the objects he had so lovingly brought together would be preserved as a whole. Rudolf's collections suffered from human rapacity and light fingers, but mainly they fell victim to politics and war. They were not alone in this respect: in the same period the no less famous Mantuan collections went missing. [66] In the centuries that followed, including our own, works of art have, generally, not fared much better.

FOOTNOTES