Abstract
The present study deals with the origins and character of all'antica forms used by the lodge of Benedict Ried to create all'antica portals at Prague Castle at around 1500. The portal to the Old Diet Hall is taken up as the example.
It has been described as a hybrid work typical of the architecture of the period melting two distinct traditions and habitual working approaches. The somewhat heterogeneous forms of the portal combining several formal traditions may, in fact, be better understood if the portal is viewed from another perspective and compared with liturgical furnishings (all'antica tabernacles) rather than large-scale portals.
The round pediment and spiral forms were frequent in Italian Quattrocento tabernacles as archetypical features designating sacred and memorable places used from long ago throughout European tradition. In the Italian Quattrocento, the architecturally conceived perspectival tabernacle prevailed.
If such a model was taken up to create the Old Diet Hall portal, its specific features did not result from misinterpretation of the models and/or polemical combination of two available formal vocabularies, but rather from a literal application of what the model suggested and the effort to develop the aesthetic strategies preferred by the author, i.e. Benedict Ried, himself with his focus on the dynamic and elusive.
But no systemic distinction or contradiction were seen in the forms as such. The base spurs, typical of Venetian and Dalmatian 15th century architecture, furthermore present evidence that at least some all'antica models were brought to Prague by Dalmatian stonecutters, possibly trained in Venice, who worked for Corvinus in Buda, as attested by archival data.
The Vladislav Hall façade capital with a well (one of Corvinus' emblems) shows stonecutters from Buda must have come to Prague.