This sculpture used to be situated in the Prague Clementinum, to which it had been transferred from the abolished church of Our Lady on the Puddle in the Old Town of Prague. This is where the report of a payment of 90 florins to Matthias Braun originated in 1712. Braun created St Jude as an old man of an impressively lively appearance, whose well-built body was provided with a surprisingly wild movement seen in the gesture of his left arm. The superbly modelled head with the eyes halfclosed in pain and his mouth half-opened does not represent an out-of-this-world trance of a visionary, as had been the interpretation, but an excited defence of the falsely accused and calumniated person. Jude Thaddaeus was renowned as an ardent rhetorician and energetic protector of good renown, whom the legendary tradition provided with the attribute ..Lebaeus (Bold, Courageous). Braun’s remote, yet distinctly visible inspiration was Bernini’s sculpture of St Longin from St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
