Opening in the Archdiocesan Museum: Architecture in Graphic Art of the 16th-18th Centuries

The prints preserved at the Kromeriz Castle depict the architecture of buildings, their interiors and gardens, both ideal and ephemeral, based on the sheer imagination and creativity of the creators. There are also popular vedutas and views of the city’s interior and its everyday or festive life.

“Although the depiction of architecture was primarily initiated by architects themselves during the Renaissance, it soon developed as an independent artistic genre. In addition to architects, painters and specialized draughtsmen increasingly became the authors of graphic designs, whose designs were carried out by professionally trained engravers,” explains Helena Zápalková, curator of the Olomouc Museum of Art. “A truly exceptional artist is the Italian graphic artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who managed to combine the training of an architect, a scientist-archaeologist and the inventiveness of an artist in his bravura etchings of ancient monuments. His albums are among the most valuable in the collection of prints in Kroměříž.”

The collection of prints of the bishops and archbishops of Olomouc is closely related to the history of the Kromeriz Castle Library, which was founded in 1694 by the art-loving Bishop Charles of Lichtenstein-Castelcorn in a newly built residence. Files of graphic sheets or richly illustrated books have been in the inventory of the castle library from the very beginning and their number has grown over time through targeted purchases and personal bequests of individual prelates. Most of the graphic sheets, together with a rare set of the Old Master’s drawings, were allocated to a separate collection by the archivist and librarian Antonín Breitenbacher in 1932. Nevertheless, some of the graphic albums remained part of the castle library.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)