Abstract
A deeper knowledge of the Baroque collections of Neapolitan paintings in Bohemia and Moravia has only recently started in the Czech history of art. Thus, no exhaustive survey of this phenomenon can thus be presented.
Neapolitan paintings from before 1656 entered Bohemian and Moravian collections only after this epoch ended. The inventory of the Prague Castle collections from 1685 (copy of the 1663 inventory) registers the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who revived the Prague Castle collection by new purchases made for the Emperor Ferdinand III, in 1655-1656, with the aim of remedying the consequences of the war disasters.
The 1685 (or 1663) inventory only registers the two pictures by transalpine painters, Johann Heinrich Schönfeld and Matthias Stomer, working in Naples. Evidence concerning Neapolitan acquisitions is more frequently drawn from surprisingly, by the inventories of the Prince- Bishop of Olomouc, Karl of Lichtenstein-Castelcorno.
The European standard of the bishop's collection was achieved by his acquisition, between 1673 and 1680, of a superb collection from the brothers Franz and Bernhard of Imstenraedt, which was had mostly been derived from the holdings of the executed Stuart King Charles I and of his courtier Thomas Howard, Count of Arundel. Thus the collection was enriched with an alleged "Dürer" panel, Three Marys at the Christ's Tomb , in fact a fake by Luca Giordano, or with David meditating on the Head of Goliath by Artemisia Gentileschi copying his father's work.
Later bishops of Olomouc, for instance Cardinal Wolfgang Hannibal Count Schrattenbach, Viceroy of Naples from 1719 to 1721, added to the Olomouc collection for example two paintings by Giambattista Canziani. Archbishop Theodor Kohn (1893-1904) acquired in Rome the canvas by Mariano Rossi, Joshua Stops the Sun in the Battle with the Amorites.
Collections by noblemen travelling to Italy, for intance Count Humprecht Jan Czernin, František Antonín Berka of Dubá, the Sternbergs, the Liechtensteins and mainly the Colloredo-Mansfelds enriched also their collections by Neapolitan works: Luca Giordano, Filippo Vitale, Pacecco De Rosa, Abraham Brueghel, Jusepe de Ribera, Tanzio da Varallo, Francesco Solimena, Andrea Vaccaro,Bartolomeo Passante, Giacomo del Po, Paolo de Matteis. Some Neapolitan works were acquired by private owners later, like paintings by Bernardo Cavallino (Olomouc) or Artemisia Gentileschi (Brno), now in public museums.