1684-1738
The most important baroque sculptor of Bohemia came from the Tyrol. He was born on February 24, 1684, In Sautens, a small hamlet near the village of Oetz on the estate of the Cistercian monastery of Stams, near Innsbruck. As a youth Braun witnessed the extensive Baroque adaptation of the late-Romanesque monastery complex, which undoubtedly served as a major impulse for the development of arts throughout the region. It possibly also decided the future of the young man, who was later to influence art in Bohemia and the artistic quality of Count Sporck's cultural activities in such an important way.
Everything seems to suggest that young M.B. Braun was chosen to become a wood carver and as a boy was able to gain experience in the workshop of Andreas Tamasch, an important sculptor of Tyrolean early Baroque. Tamasch was also the subject of the Stams monastery and a leading artist of the sculptural decoration of the monastery church.
With the approval of the Cistercians, who were interested in having new artists educated for later construction projects, Braun set out in 1699 on an apprentice journey to Italy. Its sculptural art, especially that of Rome, was to become the main creative impulse in his art. When, however, he returned to Stams around 1704, he found that due to economic circumstances the reconstruction of the monastery had been halted and perhaps would not resume anytime soon.
One theory about Braun's arrival in Bohemia, which was passed around for many decades, was first published in a collection of brief biographies of Czech and Moravian scholars and artists, assembled by the Enlightenment-era historian František Martin Pelcl. In this first biography of Braun, Pelcl suggests that it was Count Sporck who was responsible for Braun's arrival in Bohemia. Pelcl writes that the two men met in Bolzano where Sporck attended his daughter Eleonora's order's vows, and hired Braun to work on sculptures on his estates at Lysá nad Labem and Kuks.
In reality, Braun came to Bohemia under other, although not quite clear circumstances. In 1710 he created his first work here, the sculpture of St. Luitgarda on Charles Bridge, and immediately became an artistic star of the first order. He settled in Prague and became a respected burgher in the New Town. He established a workshop which produced dozens of wooden and stone sculptures over the next 30 years. The number of students in the workshop varied; usually there were six, sometimes more. Many of them later went on to become important masters of late-baroque sculpture in Bohemia. They usually worked according to small-scale models sculpted by Braun in clay or wood. He then corrected, modified, and sometimes finished the sculptures as the work progressed.
The meeting with Count Sporck, regardless of when and how it happened, unquestionably became an important event in Braun's life. In 1712, Sporck charged Braun with the rich and complex sculptural decoration of his newly-built residence at Kuks near Dvůr Králové. Here, in several stages, the Braun workshop produced entire sets of sculptures as well as individual pieces.
In 1712, the series of the Beatification was produced, to be followed by 40 picturesque dwarf figures for the so-called racing track in front of the hospital. During 1718 and 1719, a large series of outstanding quality was created - the Virtues and the Vices. These, along with the grandiose allegory of Religion and two introductory angels of Blessed and Sorrowful Death, were placed on the terrace in front of the hospital and the church of Holy Trinity. Between the years 1722 and 1732, a series of reliefs and sculptures was cut in living rock in the Nový les area near Kuks; it became known as "Betlém" ("Nativity", from the name of Bethlehem) based on the reliefs of the Tribute of the Shepherds and the Arrival of the Three Magi. The fact that most of these sculptures and reliefs are cut into living rock makes the series unique in the context of European art. The workshop, which operated at ?uks as well as other sites of the Choustníkovo Hradiště estate, produced a large number of sculptures, many of which have not survived. Braun and his workshop also worked for Count Sporck on his estate at Lysá nad Labem and elsewhere.
The activities of this extremely prolific sculptor naturally were not restricted to working for Count Sporck. Between 1716 and 1721, for example, he gradually produced 170 carvings and stone sculptures for the Jesuit church of St. Kliment in Prague. Consider the fact that in 1718 alone, the workshop produced, along with the abovementioned sculptures for Kuks, also the stone Column of the Holy Trinity in Teplice, sculptural decorations for the organ and two altars for the church of St. Kliment, sculptural decoration of the chateau and church at Cítoliby and the sculptures for the interior of the Czernin Palace at Hradčany in Prague.
In the last years of his life, M.B. Braun suffered from a lung disease which often afflicted stonemasons. The artistic activities of the workshop were then taken up by his nephew, Antonín Braun. It was also he who led the workshop after the death of M.B. Braun, which occurred on February 15, 1738, preceding the death of Count F.A. Sporck by a mere six weeks. The death of Antonín Braun, in 1742, brought about the end of the most prolific sculptural workshop of the Czech Baroque.
From: J. Kaše, P.Kotlík, Braun's Betlém, Paseka Publishing House, 1999
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svatý hubert
