Lobkowicz Palace
The Lobkowicz Palace is a part of the Prague Castle complex in Prague, Czech Republic. It is the only privately owned building in the Prague Castle complex and houses the Lobkowicz Collections and Museum.
The palace was built in the second half of the 16th century by the Czech nobleman Jaroslav of Pernštejn and completed by his brother, Vratislav of Pernštejn, the chancellor of the Czech Kingdom. It was opened to the public for the first time on 2 April 2007 as the Lobkowicz Palace Museum. Set in 22 galleries, the museum displays a selection of pieces from the Lobkowicz Collections, including works by artists such as Antonio Canaletto, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Diego Velázquez, as well as decorative art, military and hunting paraphernalia, musical instruments, and original manuscripts and early prints of composers including Beethoven and Mozart.
History
Lobkowicz Palace was built in the second half of the 16th century by the Czech nobleman Jaroslav of Pernštejn and completed by his brother, Vratislav II of Pernštejn, the chancellor of the Czech Kingdom. Vratislav's wife, Maria Maximiliana Manrique de Lara y Mendoza, brought the Infant Jesus of Prague statue, thought to have healing powers, from her homeland of Spain to the Palace. The statue was later given by Vratislav and Maria Maximiliana's daughter, Polyxena, to the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Prague, where it remains on display as a popular tourist attraction. A replica of the Infant Jesus of Prague is on permanent display in the Lobkowicz Palace Museum.The Palace came into the Lobkowicz family through the marriage of Polyxena to Zdeněk Vojtěch, 1st Prince Lobkowicz. In 1618, Protestant rebels threw the Catholic Imperial Ministers from the windows of the Royal Palace at Prague Castle, known as the Second Defenestration of Prague. Surviving the fall, the ministers took refuge in Lobkowicz Palace, where they were protected from further assault by Polyxena.
Following the defeat of the Protestant faction at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, the Catholic Lobkowicz family grew in influence and power for the next three centuries. Lobkowicz Palace took on a more formal, imperial role and functioned as the Prague residence when the family needed to be present at the seat of Bohemian power for political and ceremonial purposes. In the time of the 7th prince, Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowicz, the family preferred its Bohemian estates to the palace, and used it only occasionally for formal entertainments and concerts. Around 1811 it was used as a hospital for soldiers wounded in the war with Napoleon. With the exception of the 63 years during which the property was confiscated and held by Nazi and then Communist authorities, the Palace has belonged to the Lobkowicz family.
After World War I, and the abolition of hereditary titles in 1918, Maximilian Lobkowicz, son of Ferdinand Zdenko, 10th Prince Lobkowicz, demonstrated his support for the fledgling First Republic of Czechoslovakia by making several rooms at the palace available to the government headed by Tomas G. Masaryk. In 1939, the occupying Nazi forces confiscated the Palace, along with all other Lobkowicz family properties. The Palace was returned in 1945, only to be seized again after the Communist takeover in 1948. For the next forty years, the Palace was used for a variety of purposes, including State offices and as a museum of Czech history.
After the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the fall of the Communist government, President Václav Havel enacted a series of laws that allowed for the restitution of confiscated properties. Following a twelve-year restitution process, the palace returned to the ownership of the Lobkowicz family in 2002. On 2 April 2007, after four years of restoration and refurbishment, the palace was opened to the public for the first time as the Lobkowicz Palace Museum, home to one part of The Lobkowicz Collections. The 17th century baroque Concert Hall of the Lobkowicz Palace hosts regular concerts of classical music, and the premises are also used for weddings.
Architecture
After the Thirty Years War, the Palace underwent a number of significant changes, particularly under Václav Eusebius, 2nd Prince Lobkowicz. He was responsible for the palace’s significant baroque alterations and some of its more lavishly decorated salons. Václav Eusebius redesigned the palace in the Italianate style. His design influence can be seen today in the Imperial Hall, whose walls are painted in fresco with trompe l'oeil statues of emperors surrounded by geometric designs, floral and other decorative motifs. Additional examples of the Italianate style are the Concert Hall and the Balcony Room, whose ceilings are adorned with elaborate painted stuccowork and frescoes by Fabián Václav Harovník.In the 18th century, Joseph František Maximilian, 7th Prince Lobkowicz commissioned the reconstruction of the exterior of the Palace in preparation for the coronation at Prague Castle of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in 1791. The alterations included the addition of the palace's panoramic balconies. Despite the various alterations made through the years, remnants of original 16th-century murals and graffito work can still be seen in both of the interior courtyards.
The Lobkowicz Collection
The oldest and largest privately owned art collection in the Czech Republic, the Lobkowicz Collection draws its significance from its comprehensive nature, reflecting the cultural, social, political and economic life of Central Europe for over seven centuries. In 1907, Max Dvořák, a prominent member of the Vienna School of Art History, created the first complete catalogue of the Collections. After the restitution laws in the early 1990s, the Lobkowicz family was able to reassemble most of the collection, subsequently making it available to the public for the first time.Paintings
The Lobkowicz Collections comprise approximately 1,500 paintings, including famous works by artists including Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Bellotto, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach the Younger, Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, Paolo Veronese and Canaletto. The collections also include: an extensive collection of Spanish portraits; Central European portraits by Hans von Aachen and the School of Prague; Dutch, Flemish and German genre paintings; and over 50 paintings and watercolors of Lobkowicz residences by Carl Robert Croll.The three most prestigious artworks in the collection are The Hay Harvest by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and two panoramic views of London by Canaletto. Other notable works include: Hygieia Nourishing the Sacred Serpent by the Flemish master, Peter Paul Rubens; The Virgin and Child with Saints Barbara and Catherine by Lucas Cranach the Elder; Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery by Lucas Cranach the Younger; Caritas Romana by Georg Pencz and smaller paintings such as A Village in Winter by Pieter Brueghel the Younger and St. Martin Dividing his Cloak by Jan Brueghel the Elder. Venetian painting of the 16th century is represented by Paolo Veronese's David with the Head of Goliath.
The Italian baroque collection includes a prayerful Madonna by Giovanni Battista Salvi, and paintings by Francesco del Cairo, Antonio Zanchi and Giovanni Paolo Pannini. The principal Lobkowicz residences and estates—Roudnice nad Labem, Nelahozeves, Jezeří and Bílina—are depicted in oils and watercolors, commissioned from the 19th-century German painter Carl Robert Croll.
The portraits contained in The Collections reflect the Lobkowicz family's participation in European political and cultural life. The collection includes full-length Spanish portraits of Pernstejns, Lobkowiczes, Rožmberks and related members of European and ruling Habsburg dynasties by painters such as Alonso Sánchez Coello, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, Jacob Seisenegger and Hans Krell. Among the 17th and the 18th century works in the collection is the Spanish Infanta Margarita Theresa, attributed to Diego Velázquez. Later portraits of members of the Lobkowicz family are by Viennese portraitists of the 19th century such as Franz Schrotzberg and Friedrich von Amerling.
The collection of paintings is accompanied by an extensive collection of graphics and drawings, including a set of engravings of Rome by Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
Decorative arts
While not as well known as the paintings, books and music associated with the Lobkowiczes, decorative and sacred arts objects, dating from the 13th through the 20th centuries, form a significant part of The Collections.During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and the later period of Communist rule, the private chapels in the family’s principal residences were desecrated and their contents dispersed. Important artefacts survived, including a 12th-century reliquary cross of rock crystal and gilded copper. The gold reliquary head of a female saint, possibly St. Ursula, dated c. 1300 and known as the Jezeri Bust, was found in a trunk of theatrical props. It is now on display in the Lobkowicz Palace.
Late-Renaissance and early-baroque ceramics from Italy feature prominently in the collections. Several pieces of colorful Deruta ware are considered to be among the earliest Italian ceramics brought back to Bohemia. Ordered during a trip to Italy in 1551, the pieces are colourfully decorated with an image of a bull, which was the Pernstejn family crest.
By the late 17th century, Chinese hard-paste porcelain had become the great obsession of European rulers and aristocrats. The Dutch workshops at Delft created tin-glazed earthenware that was an early European imitation of the expensive Chinese ware. Around 1680 when he was Imperial Envoy to the Netherlands, Wenzel Ferdinand, Count Lobkowicz of Bilina, commissioned a personalized work, designed with intricate overlapping letters of his initials WL. With 150 pieces, the set is the largest surviving Delft dinner service. A selection of pieces are on display at the Lobkowicz Palace Museum. In the spring of 2000, over sixty pieces from this service were lent to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, to be displayed as part of the "Glory of the Golden Age" exhibition.
The Meissen factory outside Dresden discovered how to produce hard-paste porcelain in the first decade of the 18th century, for the first time outside of Asia. As a result of the factory’s proximity to the Lobkowicz landholdings and castles, 18th and 19th century examples of these porcelain works are prevalent in the collections, ranging from the earlier delicate chinoiserie motifs to the more traditional European elements and designs with fruits and flowers.
Some of the cabinetmaking and marquetry in the Collections come from the Eger craftsmen who worked in Western Bohemia in the 17th century. Several Eger jewelry cabinets are considered among the finest ever produced. Other pieces include caskets, tables and games boards, which are lavishly inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell, depicting landscapes, animals and classical motifs.