Until recently this theme had been a marginal one for Czech art history, since representations of Our Lady standing or sitting on a lion were known of mainly from what are today Austria, Germany, and Poland. “A change took place with the discovery of a previously unknown statue of the Klosterneuburg Madonna on a lion, made by the Master of the Michle Madonna, the most important Bohemian woodcarver of the first half of the 14th century,” explains the museum curator Jana Hrbáčová. The discovery gave Professor Ivo Hlobil from the Institute of Art History the idea of holding an exhibition devoted to Madonnas on lions, including a scholarly evaluation of the theme in the form of an extensive publication. In 2010 he approached the Olomouc Museum of Art with this idea, and they agreed with his proposal. Although eventually the Museum was not able to acquire for the exhibition all the statues it had in mind due to their condition, visitors will be able to see representatives of all the artistic circles that created Madonnas on lions in various styles – the Salzburg school, the Silesian-Prussian school, and last but not least the Bohemian school.
Furthermore, the Olomouc exhibition will be remembered as being connected with a historical discovery. During the preparations for the exhibition experts recognised in one of the statues from the depositary of the Museum of Art a valuable work of Silesian sculpture from the third quarter of the 14th century, the Enthroned Madonna of Nisa, which was previously thought to have been destroyed during the Second World War. “It is not entirely clear how and when this statue, one of those depicting the Madonna on a lion, came to be in Olomouc. It was probably brought here from Sternberg castle in Moravia, where it is said to have been in the chapel in the 1960s,” said the exhibition curator. According to her, the eventful travels of this unique work of art began at the end of the war. “We have discovered that the statue was moved from Poland on 12 March 1945 for fear that Nisa would be bombed, and transferred to the parish church in Javorník.”
The exhibition, which will open on 13 February and will continue till 11 May, will be accompanied by a catalogue in Czech and German, the texts for which were contributed by art historians from the Czech Republic, Austria, and Poland.