"Handke's" Moses with the Bronze Serpent. A note on Handke's no longer extant decoration of the church of Our Lady in the Předhradí district of Olomouc
Abstract
In the period around 1748, Johann Christoph Handke decorated the church of Our Lady in the Předhradí district of Olomouc with wall paintings and altarpieces. The church was deconsecrated during the reforms of Joseph II and demolished in 1846.
An idea of the original rich decoration of the interior of the church was provided two years later by J.W. Bernowský in his description of the church that had been destroyed.
Recently a drawing was found in the collections of the Research Library in Olomouc with the theme Worshipping the Bronze Serpent. It was donated to the Library in 1878 by the painter Josef Reinhart with a note that it was Handke's work for the no longer existing church in the Předhradí district of Olomouc.
The subject of the drawing corresponds very well to the description of one of the wall paintings given by J. W.
Bernowský. However, it has been possible to establish that the composition with Moses was in fact the work of Hans Rottenhammer, who created this composition in the form of a print in 1599.
The drawing in Olomouc was traced from the print using the carta oleata technique. While there can be no doubt about the adoption of the composition and its secondary use in the church of Our Lady in Předhradí, it is not possible to agree with the drawing being the work of Handke, in spite of Reinhart's note.
However, the drawing does indicate that the work of Hans Rottenhammer was one of the sources on which Handke drew for inspiration