Due in great part to the understanding and cooperativeness of the Czech culture and finance ministries, the National Gallery in Prague has been able to purchase nine major old masters artworks. These were part of the collection assembled in about 1800-1817 by Count Antonín Isidor of Lobkovic (1775-1819) of the Mělník family branch. The total sum paid (27.3 million CZK) makes it the most expensive post-1989 acquisition for the National Gallery in Prague's Old Masters Collection. The Gallery purchased two other paintings by Italian and Dutch masters from the same source in 2007.

The oldest of the paintings is the beautiful Madonna with Iris, a high-quality artwork in the style of Albrecht Dürer dating from the second half of the sixteenth century. The painting is assumed to be linked with the Prague court milieu of Emperor Rudolf II, an enthusiastic collector of the great German master's artworks. Late Baroque Venetian art is represented by Sebastian Ricci's outstanding Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The vividly painted composition is a scaled down replica of the altarpiece canvas in the Church of St Charles Borromeo in Vienna. Another variation of Venetian painting is represented by the chiaroscuro St Sebastian by Antonio Zanchi. The group of old European artworks also includes two remarkable paintings by seventeenth-century Dutch masters. Dutch Landscape with River is attributed (with reservations) to the son of the famous landscape painter Esaias van de Velde. A superb example of genre painting is Card Players, a signed work of Pieter Hermansz Verelst, the only work by this artist in the Czech collections.

Czech Baroque painting was represented by virtual masterpieces in the former Lobkovic collection. Two works by Karel Škréta, Nativity of St Wenceslas and St Martin Sharing his Coat with a Beggar, are major and irreplaceable examples of the work of this founder of the modern Bohemian painting tradition. The lunette depicting the birth of St Wenceslas is the introductory scene of a large cycle originally designed for the Monastery of Discalced Augustinians in Prague's Na Zderaze Street. The composition is based on Škréta's Italian experience, namely the painting of Simon Vouet. Shortly after 1645, Škréta painted St Martin for the main altarpiece in the Church of St Martin-in-the-Wall in Prague's Old Town, drawing inspiration from the work of the well-known Anthony van Dyck. The red, blue and white colours on the brown-toned background echo the Venetian painting tradition. The artist captured the future saint as a Roman soldier riding into the town of Amiens. A beggar sits outside the city's gate, and Martin shares his coat with him.

The so-called Lobkovic Self-Portrait is the first and best-known of the surviving self-portraits of the famous Petr Brandl. It is assumed that the work was done in around 1697, when the artist worked in the services of Count Václav Vojtěch of Šternberk. Brandl painted himself as a self-confident young man in a beret and tie and included his profession's attributes - a palette and brushes. The painting Landscape with Fishermen by the well-known Václav Vavřinec Reiner has a surviving counterpart in a museum in Hannover, Germany. This painting is the very first landscape painting by this artist ever acquired by the National Gallery in Prague. It dates from Reiner's later period (before 1740), when he turned away from heroically depicted landscapes toward a more poetic style.

Selected paintings from the former collection of Antonín Isidor Lobkovic are displayed in the exhibition premises of the National Gallery in Prague's Old Masters Collection in the Šternberk and Schwarzenberg palaces.

Vít Vlnas

The National Gallery in Prague - Old Masters Collection
Šternberk Palace
Hradčanské nám. 15, Prague 1

The National Gallery in Prague - Old Masters Collection
Schwarzenberg Palace
Hradčanské nám. 2, Prague 1

Admission fee
Basic fee: 150 CZK
Reduced fee: 80 CZK
Family admission: 200 CZK
Reduced fee after 4 p.m.: 80 / 40 / 100 CZK

Easter holidays
All National Gallery in Prague permanent exhibitions will be open Easter Monday, April 13, 2009, from 10 a.m. till 6 p.m. Regular admission fees apply.

Hours (excluding holidays)
Open daily, except Mondays, from 10 a.m. till 6 p.m.
Free admission: the first Wednesday of every month from 3 till 8 p.m.
www.ngprague.cz

Press release dated March 16, 2009
Journalist contact:
Petra Jungwirthová, National Gallery in Prague spokesperson
tel. 420 222 32 14 59, cell 606 166 513
e-mail: jungwirthova@ngprague.cz