Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Saxons and Swedes or sold off by his successors. Of the many surreal portraits by
Giuseppe
Arcimboldo
thatRudolfonceowned,onlyonenowremainsinPrague:
Vertumnus
,aportrait
of Rudolf himself as a collage of fruit, with his eyes as cherries, cheeks as apples and hair as
grapes. The rest of the collection is patchy, but it does contain one or two masterpieces, and
visiting the gallery is a great way to escape the castle crowds.
In the first room, Heintz the Elder, one of Rudolf's many court painters, provides an unusu-
ally upbeat take on the Last Judgement, with a party atmosphere prevailing. The illusionist
triple portrait of Rudolf (when viewed from the left), and his Habsburg predecessors (when
viewed from the right), by Paulus Roy, is representative of the sort of tricksy work that ap-
pealed to the emperor. There are other good royal portraits here, and in the adjacent room,
including several by
Cranach the Elder
and one by
Holbein
of Lady Vaux, wife of a poet
from the court of Henry VIII.
Immediately down the stairs is one of the collection's finest paintings,
Rubens
' richly col-
oured
Assembly of the Gods at Olympus
,featuringatypicallyvoluptuousVenusandaslightly
fazedZeus.Elsewhere,there'sanearly,verybeautiful
Young Woman at her Toilet
by
Titian.
Veronese
's best offering is his portrait of Jakob König, a German art dealer in Venice who
worked for Rudolf II among others, and who was also a personal friend of the artist. Look
out, too, for
Tintoretto
's
Flagellation of Christ
, a late work in which the artist makes very
effective and dramatic use of light, and the bust of Rudolf II by
Adriaen de Vries
, which
rather unflatteringly emphasizes the Habsburg line's protruding lower lip.
St Vitus Cathedral
April-Oct Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; Nov-Feb Mon-Sat 9am-4pm, Sun noon-4pm • Accessible
only with
Prague Castle tickets
•
katedralasvatehovita.cz
StVitusCathedral
,thenation'slargest,issqueezedsotightlyintotheHrad'sthirdcourtyard
that it's impossible to get an overall impression of this chaotic edifice, never mind a decent
photograph (watch tourists lie down on the ground in an attempt to fit the building into their
viewfinders). Its asymmetrical appearance is the product of a long and chequered history,
for although the foundation stone was laid in 1344, the cathedral was not completed until
1929 - exactly one thousand years after the death of Bohemia's most famous patron saint,
Wenceslas.
Brief history
The site of today's cathedral was originally a sacrificial altar to the heathen fertility god
Svantovit
, which partly explains why the first church, founded in 929 by Prince Václav, was
dedicated to St Vitus (svatý Vít). Vitus allegedly exorcized the Emperor Diocletian's son and
was thereafter known as the patron saint of epileptics and of sufferers from the convulsive
disorderSydenham'schorea(hencethepopularnameoftheillness,StVitus'Dance).Thein-
spiration for the medieval cathedral came from
EmperorCharlesIV
(1346-78), who, while
