Pittura della controriforma. Reception of the italian painting style of 2nd half of 16th century in the works of czech protobaroque artists
Abstract
The first part of the book is therefore based mainly on the Italian professional literature about cinquecento art, due to its so far insufficient reflection of these sources in the Czech environment and for better understanding of the Italian artistic environment. Last but not least, the Italian and German approach is so different that mixing both sources could lead to confusing and unclear conclusions.
The second half of this publication includes an analysis of the Czech environment, i.e. the professional literature of the 20th century which deals with Czech painting in the first half of the 17th century. I focus mainly on the synthesizing works which tried to include the overall development of art.
I also concentrated on three main topics to which the professional interest divided - Rudolphine art, townsman culture in Late Renaissance and the start of Baroque. By analogy to the Italian environment which deals mainly with the period of the last decades of cinquecento, i.e. the period of breakthrough and transformation, I also look at the Czech professional literature.
However, with regard to profuseness of its artistic production, the Italian environment is able to stage more clearly the individual parts of the development of art or at least to significantly differentiate Late Mannerism, Counter-reformation painting and Early Baroque. Nevertheless, this is not possible in the Czech context - due to the transfer of Italian ideas, specific Czech artistic and historic development and mingling of all these forms in a very short period of time.
The Czech professional literature therefore deals much more with the matters of early Baroque. The presented book deliberately deals only with the period of the turn, even though the reflection in the Czech literature the matter of the start of Baroque is unavoidable and it cannot be ignored.
However, it is matter of a different study. Moreover, foreign literature relating to this topic forms another comprehensive and extensive block.
The answer to the question whether and how to extend the traditional scheme of the development of Czech art is then sought in concrete examples of the Italian and Czech works of art. These examples are the last, third part of the publication.
From the Anti-Mannerism movement, or in other words Counter-reformation paintings, I chose typical iconographic themes which were depicted and developed by these movements and at that time. The development of these themes is confronted with the works of art preserved and known in the Czech environment.
The works of art are analysed mainly from the formal and stylistic point of view with the emphasis laid on the originality of the iconography and composition features. Using the examples, I studied the environment from which the composition formulas and iconographic motifs used in Bohemia originate, whether they can be referred to as the results of the Italian influence and whether they fulfil the characteristics of the potential counter-reformation style.
And whether in the Czech artistic environment we can speak about the occurrence of a moderate artistic style of sacral paintings in opposition to Mannerism paintings and therefore change the current structure applied to the history of Czech art.