His father, also named Rainer, the seventh son of the Emperor Leopold II.
In addition to private rooms and state apartments, the Hofburg contains a library of about 800,000 volumes, 7000 incunabula and 24,000 MSS., including the celebrated "Papyrus Rainer"; the imperial treasury, containing the family treasures of the house of Habsburg-Lorraine, and other important collections.
His pupil, Rainer Gemma-Frisius, used it for the observation of the solar eclipse of January 1544 at Louvain, and fully described the methods he adopted for making measurements and drawings of the eclipsed sun, in his De Radio Astronomico et Geometrico (1545).
Victor Emmanuel had married in 1842 Maria Adelaide, daughter of the archduke Rainer, who bore him several children, viz.
A short fragment has been discovered (in the Rainer papyri) from the `OSuvQei s abr6 oXos, which told how Odysseus got inside Troy in the disguise of a beggar and obtained valuable information.