The dynamically conceived and brilliantly modelled bozzetto by Braun is the only surviving sample of the terracotta models, mentioned in the contract of the summer of 1721, to serve as models for Matthias Braun’s sculptures in the Piarist church in Litomyšl. The crossing was to bear the carvings of the four Evangelists, six ells high, supplied by Georg Franz Pacák, the supervisor of the local branch of Braun’s studio. Braun himself probably only created the terra cotta models, leaving all the carving to his employees. All the work, commissioned from Braun by Franz Wenzel Count Trauttmannsdorf, who built the church itself, was paid for as late as 1729.
