Lobkowicz Palace

The collection of paintings is accompanied by an extensive collection of graphics and drawings, including a set of engravings of Rome by Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

Decorative arts

While not as well known as the paintings, books and music associated with the Lobkowiczes, decorative and sacred arts objects, dating from the 13th through the 20th centuries, form a significant part of The Collections.

During the

Late-Renaissance and early-baroque ceramics from Italy feature prominently in the collections. Several pieces of colorful

By the late 17th century, Chinese hard-paste porcelain had become the great obsession of European rulers and aristocrats. The Dutch workshops at Delft created tin-glazed earthenware that was an early European imitation of the expensive Chinese ware. Around 1680 when he was Imperial Envoy to the Netherlands, Wenzel Ferdinand, Count Lobkowicz of Bilina, commissioned a personalized work, designed with intricate overlapping letters of his initials WL. With 150 pieces, the set is the largest surviving Delft dinner service. A selection of pieces are on display at the Lobkowicz Palace Museum. In the spring of 2000, over sixty pieces from this service were lent to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, to be displayed as part of the "Glory of the Golden Age" exhibition.

The Meissen factory outside Dresden discovered how to produce hard-paste porcelain in the first decade of the 18th century, for the first time outside of Asia. As a result of the factory’s proximity to the Lobkowicz landholdings and castles, 18th and 19th century examples of these porcelain works are prevalent in the collections, ranging from the earlier delicate chinoiserie motifs to the more traditional European elements and designs with fruits and flowers.

Some of the cabinetmaking and marquetry in the Collections come from the Eger craftsmen who worked in Western Bohemia in the 17th century. Several Eger jewelry cabinets are considered among the finest ever produced.^{[citation needed]} Other pieces include caskets, tables and games boards, which are lavishly inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell, depicting landscapes, animals and classical motifs.

Music

The Music Archive of the Lobkowicz Collection holds over 5,000 items. Originally housed in The Lobkowicz Library at the principal family seat of Roudnice Castle, the entire archive was confiscated, first by the Nazis in 1941, and again by the Communist regime, which sent it to the Museum of Czech Music. In October 1998, the Music Archive was returned to the family in its entirety and moved to Nelahozeves Castle under the auspices of the Roudnice-Lobkowicz Foundation.

The Music Archive, established by

Philip Hyacinth, 4th Prince of Lobkowicz, and his second wife, Anna Wilhelmina Althan, were both distinguished lutenists and the prince was an accomplished composer as well. Both were taught by some of the finest contemporary lutenists, including Sylvius Leopold Weiss and Andreas Bohr, and their fine period instruments remain part of the collections. Their son, Ferdinand Philip, the sixth prince, played the glass harmonica and championed the son of one of the family's foresters, the opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck.

The family member who had the greatest impact on the history of Western music, however, was the 7th prince,

The Nelahozeves Castle Music Room displays a spinet dated 1799 by imperial court instrument maker Engelbert Klingler, a contrabass by Posch and other string instruments as well as two pairs of copper and bronze kettledrums.

Military and hunting equipment

Hunting was an important activity for Central European nobility from the late Renaissance period onwards, and all of the major Lobkowicz properties served as venues for hunting. Bearing witness to these hunting parties and their participants are hundreds of mounted trophies in the Lobkowicz Collections, dating from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. The social aspects of the hunt are also reflected in the numerous paintings and graphics by local artists in the collection, among them pictures of favourite horses, dogs and trophies. The central part of the hunting-related exhibitions, however, is the firearms themselves, which are displayed in two armoury rooms at Lobkowicz Palace, while further items from the collection are held at Nelahozeves Castle.

The majority of these rifles and pistols were produced locally for the family between 1650 and 1750, by the 17th-century

The collection features a group of identical flintlock rifles produced for the

The palace housed an exhibition of the work Illustrated geography and history of Bohemia by Bavarian cartographer Mauritius Vogt. The exhibition ran until 31 May 2015.

Lobkowicz Collections o.p.s.

In 1994, a non-profit organisation, Lobkowicz Collections o.p.s. (previously the Roudnice Lobkowicz Foundation), was established to curate and maintain the Lobkowicz Collection, recently returned to the family after the Velvet Revolution. The organisation also works to provide access to the art, music and literature contained in the collection to academic researchers and the general public. Lobkowicz Collections o.p.s. has co-ordinated the installation of the collections at both Lobkowicz Palace and Nelahozeves Castle.

The organisation's responsibilities include:

• overseeing the preservation and installation of the objects in The Collections
• developing education programs for students
• promoting and facilitating academic research around The Collections
• administering loans to other cultural institutions
• curating exhibitions of works included in the collections for the public

Significant restoration projects include the restoration of Peter Paul Rubens’ Hygieia Nourishing the Sacred Serpent, restored by Hubert von Sonnenburg of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This project was funded by the American Friends for the Preservation of Czech Culture (AFPCC).

Lobkowicz Collections o.p.s. also administers lending of artworks to exhibitions. Since 1993, over 200 works of art have been lent to museums in the

• Palais Lobkowitz, Vienna
• Lobkowicz family

References

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