Zprávy památkové péče 2016, 76(Příloha):68-77

Copies, replicas, "á la Brandl". The response to Peter Brandl in Eastern Bohemia

Petr Arijčuk

A significantly larger number of works than truly exist is generally associated with Peter Brandl (1668-1735) as a key figure in Baroque painting in Bohemia, particularly on the pages of older inventory and dictionary literature as well as in older source reports. In addition, the authorship of many other paintings are ascribed to Brandl's student, Brandl's follower, Brandl's circle, and in Brandl's manner. We encounter this situation in eastern Bohemia as well, a place that provided this artist with repeated employment opportunities in the 1720's and first half of the 1730's.
In the context of Brandl's activities in eastern Bohemia, and on the issue of his East Bohemian pupils, again emphasized more in literature than through objectively identified and documented works, this text focuses on several contemporary responses to his local creations using the examples of hitherto generally overlooked copies and replicas of his works. More of them may be found in the pictorial collection of the Broumov Benedictine monastery. Particularly remarkable for its painter qualities is the picture of the Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary and John, which is a copy of Brandl's well-known painting of the same subject painted for the Jesuit church in Prague's Old Town. Due to the painting recently credited to Brandl (based on the discovery of a signature) of the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, located in the interior of a rural church in Skalka near Wroclaw, we may now determine two copies of this composition (in the Benedictine monastery in Broumov and on the main altar of the church in Chodovice u Hořic) and one variant design (on the side altar of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Nový Bydžov) in the environment of eastern Bohemia. Given the number of these eastern Bohemian copies, and the not-very-convincing execution of Brandl's signature of the marked picture in Skalka, the article expresses certain doubts whether the work in Skalka is truly Brandl's authentic work, evaluated quite differently before the observation of the signature.
In addition to this group of works, the text also focuses on several remarkable and previously only marginally mentioned images which we may characterized by the aforementioned "á la Brandl". For several of these paintings (St. Peter and his counterpart St. Paul from Sobotka, St. Mary Magdalene from Trutnov, St. Jerome originally from Hněvčeves) an X-ray examination was conducted which revealed interesting information for their subsequent evaluation and classification.
In both groups - among the copies and replicas as well as among the works painted in the style of Brandl - we managed to newly identify work that can be connected with a person in Jičín, the established painter Jan Jiří Major (about 1691-1744). He is traditionally mentioned, on the basis of an old report from Dlabacž, as one of Brandl's pupils; for now, however, his work, captured by only a very limited number of works, is relevant.

Keywords: Petr Brandl; Baroque painting in Eastern Bohemia; copies and replicas of Brandl's work; Brandl's circle; á la Brandl; Jan Jiří Major

Published: December 1, 2016  Show citation