MATYÁŠ BERNARD BRAUN

This, the most prominent sculptor of the Baroque period in Bohemia was of Tyrolese origin. He was born on 24 February 1684 in Sautens, a small village belonging to the parish of Oetz, at the estate of the Cistercian Monastery in Stams near Innsbruck. At the time of Braun's youth an extensive Baroque reconstruction of the late Romanesque monastery complex was taking place and this was surely a mighty impulse for the development of plastic arts of the entire region. It was also evidently a decisive factor in the career choice of this young man who was later to so significantly impact the development of the arts in Bohemia, as well as the form and artistic quality of the cultural activities of Count F. A. Sporck. Everything points to the facts that he was selected for the woodcarving profession and as a boy could gain his first experience from a prominent Tyrolese sculptor of the early Baroque, Andreas Tamash. The latter was also a subject of the Stams monastery and was a leading personality in the work on the sculptural decoration of the monastery's church. With the agreement of the Cistercians, who were evidently interested in training artists for their further construction activity, he undertook in 1699 a study trip to Italy. Its sculptural art, especially Roman sculpture, became the decisive impulse for Braun's art. When around 1704 he returned to Stams, he found that due to economic and political events the reconstruction of the monastery had ground to halt and would not continue in the foreseeable future.

In the collection of biographical medallions of Czech and Moravian men of letters and artists, put together by the Age of Enlightenmeant historian Frantisek Martin Pelcl in 1782, a conjecture was made in the first biography of Braun which later gained wide currency. The impetus for the arrival of this sculptor to Bohemia was supposed to be Count Sporck. In 1704 he visited Bozen (today Bolzano in northern Italy) where he took part in the profession of faith of his daughter Eleanor. There he allegedly became acquainted with Braun and hired him to work on sculptures in Lysa nad Labem and in Kuks. M. B. Braun settled down in Bohemia under circumstances that have not been completely clarified. In 1710 he comleted here his first work, the sculptural group of St Luitgarde on Charles Bridge and immediately shone as a star of the first magnitude. He settled in Praque and became an esteemed citizen in the district Nove Mesto. He founded a workshop which over the following decades produced hundreds of wooden and stone statues. The number of apprentices at the workshop varied; usually there were six of them, sometimes evidently even more. Many of them later became prominent masters of Bohemian Baroque sculpture. They usually worked on the basic of small models that Braun formed out of clay or wood. Then, in the course of the statue's completion, he corrected or in some cases finished them.

A significant event in Braun's life was his making the acquaintance of Count Sporck. In 1712 Sporck commissioned Braun with the rich and complex sculptural decoration of his residence Kuks near Dvur Kralove, then under construction. Here the workshop in several stages created entire series as well as individual statues. In 1712 it was a group of allegories of Blessedness, in 1713 forty picturesque figures of dwarves on the so-called racetrack in front of the hospice, which was part of the Kuks site. In 1718 and 1719 a large series of outstanding works, the allegories of Virtues and Vices which, together with a grandiose allegory of Religion, were placed on the terrace in front of the hospice building and the Church of the Holy Trinity. Between 1722 and 1732 the series of statues and reliefs in Novy les (New Forest) near Kuks were gradually completed; from the large reliefs Adoration of the Shepherds and Coming of the Magi, sculpted directly into natural rock, it is known as Bethlehem. The very fact that most of the statues originating there are sculptured directly into the rock formation cropping out of the ground, is unique in the plastic arts. The workshop created a number of other statues both at Kuks and at various locations in Choustnikovo Hradiste Estate, where Kuks was build, quite a few of which have not survived. Braun with his workshop worked for Count Sporck also at his other estate, Lysa nad Labem and elsewhere.

The activities of the extremely fertile sculptor were not of course limited merely to work of Count Sporck. For example, between 1716 and 1721 he supplied for the Jesuit Church of St Clement in Praque 170 carvings and stone statues. In 1718 the workshop, besides the mentioned statues for Kuks, also produced the stone column of the Holy Trinity in Teplice, the statuary of the organ and two altars of the Church of St Clement, the sculptural decoration of the castle and church in Citoliby and the plastic decoration of the interior of the Cerninsky Palace at Hradcany in Praque. During the last years of his life Braun suffered from lung disease, a frequent illnes of stonemasons. The artistic initiatives at the workshop then came under the auspices of his nephew Antonin Braun. He also managed the whole workshop after Braun had died on 15 February 1738, six weeks before the death of his greatest patron, F. A. Sporck. Finally, with the death of his nephew Antonin Braun in 1742 the activity of the most fruitful sculptural workshop of the Czech Baroque came to a close.