Department of Early Modern Art

The department's research team focuses on Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture in the Czech lands in the wider Central-European context. Individual department members develop and apply their expertise in their respective fields of interest, while simultaneously participating in common tasks that are important for the department as a whole. The research into Prague court art around 1600 has a particularly long tradition, supported organizationally and methodologically by Studia Rudolphina. Research Centre for Visual Arts and Culture in the Age of Rudolf II, an internationally established facility headed by Sylva Dobalová. Its members participate in international exhibitions and publication projects and the centre also publishes an eponymous bulletin (indexed in the SCOPUS database). The department also houses the The Center for Baroque Ceiling Painting in Central Europe (BCPCE) (Head Martin Mádl) which focuses on the documentation and interpretation of wall paintings in close cooperation with international experts. Over the course of its existence, it has carried out many projects including research into the Tencalla family of fresco painters in Central Europe and Baroque wall painting in Benedictine monasteries in the Czech lands.

The latter projects were concluded with extensive monographs Tencalla (2012–2013) and Benediktini [The Benedictines] (2016). The most recent publication includes Ve stínu Karla Škréty: Pražští malíři v letech 1635–1680 [In the Shadow of Karel Škréta: Prague Painters in 1635–1680. Anton Stevens – Johann Friedrich Hess – Matthias Zimprecht] (2017). The Renaissance research is represented by an exhibition catalogue about Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria (2017) and a monograph on Summer Palace Star / Hvězda (2014 – in Czech, 2017 – in English).

The department’s employees are currently working on three GAČR (CSF) projects: Baroque ceiling painting between theory and praxis (PI Martin Mádl, 2021–2023), Art for Display: The Painting collection of Emperor Rudolf II within the context of collecting practices circa 1600 (PI Štěpán Vácha, 2020–2022) and The Alchemical laboratorium in the Fine Arts (PI Ivo Purš, 2019–2021). Some of already closed projects are heading for their final outputs: The Idea and its Realization: the Art Culture of the Society of Jesus in the Czech Lands (Michal Šroněk, 2017–2019), Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol (1529–1595) and his cultural patronage between Prague and Innsbruck (Sylva Dobalová, 2017–2019) and Jusepe Ribera, Galileo Galilei and the Five Senses: A Study in Early Seventeenth-Century painting and the new science (Lubomír Konečný, 2017–2019).