The Birth of St Wenceslas

A lunette featuring the birth of the future martyr, and foremost patron saint of the Czech Lands, St Wenceslas, is part of a cycle that originally included thirty-two paintings. In the 17th century, the monastery Na Zderaze was one of the main centres of the St Wenceslas cult. The monastic library kept a medieval legend of this saint, which had become one of the sources of inspiration for the execution of the cycle by this painter. Škréta captured the moment after the birth, in which the midwife is holding little Wenceslas in her arms, with his grandmother St Ludmila coming on the right to give her blessings, whereas his mother Drahomíra has fainted and is being resuscitated by two other maids. The scene was treated almost genre-like with a number of objects of daily use. Although Škréta represented St Wenceslas in many of his works, the Zderaz cycle is an important milestone in his production. As early as their time, the paintings formed a basis for a literary depiction of St Wenceslas’s life, written by the Prior of the monastery, and served as a source of inspiration for the subsequent generations of artists, until the early 20th century.