Leseprobe

Artists in times of war 416 altarpiece for the Church of the Holy Saviour near Charles Bridge, which is a reproduction of Raphael’s The Transf igu­ ration .9 Shortly afterwards, the Carmelites, who rededicated the Holy Trinity Church in the Lesser Town, which had been built by the Lutherans, as the Church of Our Lady Victorious in commemoration of the Battle of White Mountain, commissioned a high altarpiece on the theme of the Catholic victory of 1620. It was painted by Antonín Stevens von Steinfels (c. 1608 – c. 1675), a leading artist who had worked several times in the service of the court (see p. 42, fig. 1).10 Thus, in 1638 Karel Škréta found Prague to be by no means an artistic vacuum, as Sandrart described it; rather, there was a spirit of new beginnings, in which he—with the experience he had gained in Italy—was welcome. A favour- able opportunity for him to demonstrate his abilities arose from 1640 thanks to the Discalced Augustinian Hermits in the Church of St Wenceslas at Zderas in the New Town of Prague.11 In 1623 they had been given the local Gothic church, which they expanded into a centre of the cult of Wenceslas; they therefore commissioned a cycle of lunette FIG. 4 Matthäus Merian the Elder after Karel Škréta , Wahrer Abriß der beyden Königlichen Haubt Alt- und Neustatt Prag [ … ] (Withdrawal of the Swedes after the Siege of Prague in November 1648), Frankfurt amMain, 1652, engraving, h. 29.9 cm, w. 58.6 cm, Prague, Národní galerie Praha, inv. no. R 95074 paintings depicting scenes from the saint’s life for the asso- ciated monastery. The six works executed by Škréta contri­ buted significantly to his reputation (fig.2)12 and secured him further commissions for the library and sacristy of this monastery.13 In 1644 he was able to produce two altarpieces for the Church of St Thomas, thus placing his works in direct proximity to the paintings by Rubens there. A year later, the Confraternity of the Dead commissioned him to paint a Crucifixion for their chapel at the Church of St Nicholas in the Lesser Town. And in 1647 he was com- missioned by the Lesser Town lawyer Maximilian Antonius Cassini to produce an altarpiece for the high altar in the chapel of the Italian Hospital in the Lesser Town—the social centre of Italian craftsmen and artists in Prague. In this painting he not only honoured Saint Charles Borromeo as the patron saint of plague victims, but also portrayed himself standing directly behind his namesake (fig. 3). A member of the Old Town painters’ guild from 1644, Škréta became its chief elder in 1652 and thus the most influential representative of his profession.Whether he actually stood on the barricades during the defence of