St Luke Painting the Madonna

This painting is a modello for the main altarpiece for the Prague church of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star, for whom Liška worked from the 1690s, and after 1700, jointly with his stepfather Willmann. This sketch already includes the composition based on crossing diagonals, from which the action and relations of the main characters are worked out. Unlike the resulting final painting, which is livelier in colours and enriched by other figures, the sketch impresses as more focused and distinctly arranged. The painter limited himself to the most important protagonists of the narrative, whom he accentuated both in colours and the use of light. Some of the forms are exaggerated, other parts are deliberately subdued and left in the shadow, while the painter’s expression is achieved by a colour blotch.