Road to Prague Castle

Artworks by Rudolfine masters were sought out by collectors as the era of Emperor Rudolf II has always represented the golden age of the creation and collection of art. The first inspector of the Picture Gallery of The Society of Patriotic Friends of Arts Josef Karel Burde (1779-1848) had a sketchbook of landscape studies attributed to the famed Pieter Stevens. The picturesque vistas of Prague stimulated the imagination of artists and were undoubtedly a great source of inspiration for the sketchbook’s owner, too. He and his son Rudolf produced facsimiles that serve as valuable evidence of the lost originals. Four of them could be attributed to Paulus van Vianen based on the faithful reproduction of the original studies’ brushwork. This underlines Burde’s sense and understanding of the most subtle features of artistic expression. Burde has made it possible for the viewer to see now-extinct parts of old Prague. In the Road to Prague Castle, for example, the artist captured the building in whose place the Salm Palace stands today.