SPANISH PORTRAITS - history

The art gallery at the chatteau at Routnice presents a picture of a relatively long period in the history not only of Bohemia but Europe. It moreover forms a chronological serie. Such a these chateaux are witness to the life of and the influences upon the Bohemian nobility from the early XVI century on. The pictures located in there have an exceptionally high artistic quality. The collection grew up by stages from the early XVI century on, when 3 galleries, those at Rožmberk, Pernštejn and the Lobkovic gallery, were merged. Among the total number of a thousand pictures in the collection today there are some five hundred portraits and those made by leading Spanish Court portraitists of the second half of the XVI and early XVII centuries form a separate set of their own. This is the biggest collection of Spanish XVI century portraits outside Spain.

            How did this little island of Spanish painting come into existence at so remote a place? With the ascension of the Habsburgs to the throne of Bohemia in 1526 the Czech Lands became part of the Habsburg Empire. It left a deep psychological mark both on the Czech nobility and the burghers and found a reflection equally in cultural relations.

            The year 1548 marks an important point in Czech-Spanish relations, for in that year a retinue of Czech aristocrats formed part of the progress of Archduke Maximilian to Spain, and among them was the eighteen-year old Vratislav of Pernštejn. They were accompanying the Archduke on his honeymoon (in September that year he had taken the Infanta María of Spain-the daughter of Charles V.-to wife). On return to Vienna the bride’s suite included María Maximiliana de Lara y Mendoza (one of the leading families of the Spanish aristocracy).

            Later Vratislav of Pernštejn (Chancellor of the Kingdom of Bohemia), married María Maximiliana Manrique de Lara. The entire Pernštjn family came under Spanish influence for many years to come. People considered him more of a Spaniard than a Czech.

            The Pernštejn house became one of the most important links between Czech and Spanish cultural life. María Maximiliana ran her entire household to Spanish customs and traditions. They spoke and wrote in Spanish, their portraits were painted by Spanish painters of renown.

            Her son Juan wrote only in Spanish, though he could speak both Czech and German. The Spanish Ambasador mentioned in 1591 that everybody considered him as Spaniard. Furthermore, in 1587 he married his cousin of the Manrique de Lara family who owned an estate in Moravian Tovačov, and their son Vratislav Eusebius lived on an endowment from Spain right up to his death. Juan’s sister Polyxena, the heiress of cultural traditions of the Pernštejn, became the founder of the power and fame of the Lobkovic family and considered herself half Spanish. The other two sisters, Juana and Luisa, went to Spain. Juana became engaged to Fernando de Aragón z Gurea and Luisa entered the royal convent of the bare-footed Carmelites in Madrid. Bibiana married in Italy and Francisca became Lady-in Waiting to the French Queen Isabella of Austria.

            The entire reign of Rudolph II shows the growing influence of Spain on the Bohemian Lands. He and his brother had been educated in Spain, Rudolph’s personal suit was Spanish and Spanish trends dominated his system of government. Since the imperial Court settled permanently in Prague, this Romance world came even closer to the Czech Lands.

            He Spanish Ambasador to Prague became the champion of the Bohemian Catholic party, and fervent Catholics were known as “Spaniards”, beginning with ambassadorship of Francisco Hurtado de Mendoza.

            The center of social and political life of the “Spanish” party was the Pernštejn Palace at Hradčany, which after the death of Vratislav of Penstejn (1582) was run by his wife María Maximiliana. An important role was played by her daughter Polyxena. Both Czech camps, the Catholic and the Utraquist one, considered Polexena the prototype of a true Renaissance lady.

            When in 1627 Polyxena handed Litomyšl over to her nephew Vratislav of Pernštejn, she laid down the condition, that she should be entitled to the pictures in the in the Pernstein family gallery. Polyxena made out a hand-written list of the pictures in Spanish. Later she had a Czech inventory drawn up. The inventories cannot have been complete and probably contained only the most important portraits. During the restorations of the pictures, carried out by painter Sternenfeld, he marked the number of paintings as damaged or very badly damaged. Unfortunately he over painted them with a very heavy hand.

            As in other contemporary picture galleries of the aristocracy the collection of portraits forms an important part of the Pernstejn gallery. While in the family gallery of the Protestant Charles the Elder of Žerotín attention was paid to portraits of important French personalities, monarchs…, while the collections of the Catholic squires of Hradec concentrated on portraits of Bohemian kings, the Pernštejn family gallery contains important personalities of the Spanish world. It is interesting that the portraits of Spanish royalty are not copies. They are mostly originals or at least good quality replicas by Alonso Sanchéz Coello.

            The attention of Czech and foreign art historians has for a long time been centered on the unique collection of Spanish portraits at Roudnice. Originally archieve-keeper Josef Dvořák set out to prove the alleged authorship of the portraits. He applied a genealogical viewpoint. His grandson Max Dvořák pointed out the fact that Sanchéz and Pantoja left a basic mark upon Velázquez. In Spain, after the middle of the XVI century, the influence of the Netherlandish artist Anthonis Mor became merged with that of Titian and with traces of contemporary Portuguese portrait painting and his led to a great development of the School of Portraiture at the Court of Spain.