N.B. ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED TO CLOSE ON 31 MARCH 2008
From the museum website, 30 December 2008
This exhibition is focused on the origins of the Prague Castle collections. Thanks to the generosity of a foreign admirer of Rudolfine art, four works, most probably made for these spaces, have returned for a year’s stay in the milieu originally connected with a great period of the Castle, when it was the imperial residence of Rudolf II.
For the first time since their discovery three paintings and one sculpture from a private collection are being presented by Prague Castle Gallery in a public exhibition. The hitherto unknown, uncatalogued works with subject matter from classical mythology and the Bible were made by important artists at Rudolf’s court: the German painter, diplomat, and buyer of artworks for the imperial collections Hans von Aachen (Cologne 1551/52 – Prague 1615); the Flemish painter and draughtsman Bartholomeus Spranger (Antwerp 1546 – Prague 1611); and the Netherlandish sculptor Adriaen de Vries (The Hague c.1556 – Prague 1626).