Prague
Baroque decorative arts at Schwarzenberg Palace
Last year the National Gallery in Prague placed 160 sculptures and 280 paintings created in Czech lands between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries on permanent display in the newly reopened Schwarzenberg Palace. This past February the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague enriched this display with an independent installation at the palace devoted to the decorative arts of Central Europe during these same periods. Installed in the n
ewly restored vaulted rooms of the basement, this new permanent exhibition contains more than four hundred objects from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, divided into furniture, tablewares, graphic arts, and liturgical objects.
The Schwarzenberg Palace, at Castle Square near Prague Castle, was built for Jan, count of Lobkowicz, and completed in 1567 by Agostino Galli. It distinctively melds Italianate influences with Czech traditions, notably with its striking black-and-white sgraffito exterior. Although the palace has been used as a museum since 1910-first by the National Technical Museum and later the Military History Museum-the building underwent a major reconstruction after the National Gallery acquired it in 2002 and is well worth visiting for its own merits.
Baroque Masterpieces from the Collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague · Schwarzenberg Palace, Prague · www.upm.cz
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Pickle Dish, American China Manufactory (Bonnin and Morris), Philadelphia, 1771-72. Soft-paste porcelain with lead glaze; height 4 3/16, width 4 1/2
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