zámek v Nelahozevsi - jihozápadní bastión
se vstupním portálem a mostem
The late Renaissance Nelahozeves Castle rises up on a cliff situated on the left bank of the Vltava river, some thirty kilometres from Prague. The nearby village of Nelahozeves is best known as the birthplace of the world-famous composer Antonín Dvořák. In 1544 Florián Griespek of Griespach purchased the landed estate with its village and fortress, establishing a castle there. A multitalented Renaissance man who originally came from an impoverished Bavarian noble family, he studied in Paris and then came to the Prague court of Ferdinand I, earning the king’s favour with his intelligence and diplomatic skills. In 1532 he became Ferdinand’s personal secretary and also secretary of the Bohemian Chamber, a royal privy council. Ten years later he even became a member of the military secret council. As the financial administrator of the Bohemian Chamber, he was entrusted with supervising royal building work being undertaken in Bohemia. This enabled him to acquire not only the necessary finance but also specialised workers as well: builders, stuccoers and other craftsmen. The meteoric career of this entrepreneurial knight became a thorn in the side of court artistocrats, who during the period of the estates’ rebellion against the king (1547) accused him of treason and had him imprisoned in the White Tower of Prague Castle. He was, however, subsequently released after direct intervention by the king.
zámek v Nelahozevsi - letecký pohled
Florián Griespek’s social ascent to the function of high court official also manifested itself in his desire for representation corresponding to his wealth, intelligence and education. In 1539 he founded Kačerov Castle near Plzeň, and over the years he bought up several more estates, building or adapting numerous residences (Rožmital, Nečtiny, Libštejn, Kočov). Nelahozeves, which he proudly called Floriansburg in his will (he died in 1588), was the only castle he built with his own financial resources. Apart from his economic interests, in the spirit of Renaissance humanism he also devoted himself to history, the literature of classical antiquity and art. Nelahozeves Castle, where he built up a large library and gallery, is witness to this.
Florián Griespek began building his castle from the eastern wing on a cliff overlooking the Vltava. The basic fabric of the castle was built between 1552 and 1558. The architecturally most ambitious part of the castle was the north wing with a lightened loggia, built between 1558 and 1564, which was used for ceremonial and residential purposes. Following the completion of the north wing the original plan was significantly scaled down, due not only by the increasing costs of Florián’s other construction projects, but also by the constraints of the site on which the castle was being built. The narrow west wing with its ribbed vault thus became an access link with the south-west bastion. On the site where the south wing was planned to have been, only a low wall was built.
The architecture of Nelahozeves Castle ranks among the most remarkable and highly-advanced artistic expressions of the latter half of the 16th century, not only in Bohemia but in Central Europe as a whole. The building not only absorbed but also evaluated foreign impulses and their influence in the domestic Czech context. The conception of an enclosed four-cornered Renaissance castle begun by Italian builders and stonemasons from Kačerov was altered by specific conditions of the terrain and by a decision made by Griespek himself. The subsequently built north and west wings, most probably designed by Bonifác Wohlmut, represented a change of focus on the contemporary architecture of Italian Mannerism. Having studied the most recent writings on architecture, especially Sebastian Serlio, Bonifác Wohlmut (like Andrea Palladio) used rows of columns and plasters taken from the architecture of classical antiquity, ancient Rome in particular. This knowledge and love of antiquity is demonstrated in the decoration of the representative north front, both by the iconography of the sgraffiti designed after prints by the Nuremberg engraver Virgil Solis, a follower of Dürer, and by the painted and stuccoed decoration of the central hall. Tradition was not overlooked in the completion of such a costly and ambitious feudal seat: the corner bastions, the moat and the drawbridges recalled the defensive function of medieval residences. The fortress-like character was lightened by sgrafitto decoration that followed on from the Czech domestic tradition of medieval painted facades. It is no wonder, therefore, that one can also find elements of northern European Renaissance with its echoes of Gothic in the eastern portal. Nelahozeves Castle is thus more than simply an interesting testimony to the personality of its builder and his era.
After the builder’s death, it was not possible to keep Nelahozeves in his family’s possession. Large debts forced Florián’s grand-daughter Veronica to sell the estate in 1623 to Polyxena of Pernštejn and Lobkowicz. The Lobkowicz family built its chief residence in Roudnice nad Labem, however. Nelahozeves Castle had already been pillaged before it was sold – in 1621 by the imperial army, again ten years later by troops from Passau during their incursion into Bohemia and later by Swedish troops during their assault on Prague. As a result the art collection, library and gallery were all dispersed. Major repair work begun in 1860 was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, and the castle was subsequently adapted into a military hospital. In 1874 a boarding school for girls of noble families was established in the east wing of the castle. With their architecturally unsuitable interventions, the economic interests of the authorities further broke up the fabric of the considerably dilapidated building. In 1876 the builder František Riedl presented a project to renew the castle which, due the major costs it would have incurred, was never carried out. It was only in 1909-1912 that work on saving the sgraffito decorations and renewing the north wing was first undertaken. This restoration was carried out under the supervision of the leading art historian Max Dvořák. However in 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War, a large fire destroyed the roof and damaged the ceiling on the second floor. In 1949 the Czechoslovak state took over the administration of the castle.
In 1965 the Central Bohemia Regional Centre of Cultural Heritage and Nature Conservation allowed the Central Bohemian Gallery to use part of the building for its collection of modern art. In the 1960s reconstruction work was begun on the dilapidated structure that continued through to the 1980s. To begin with, the individual parts of the building were made stable and reconstructed, then the windows were replaced and the courtyard was repaved. The main hall and compartment ceilings were renewed, while the sgraffito decorations and sections of stonemasonry were restored. The largest piece of work was the completion of the south-east bastion. Even before the Central Bohemian Gallery was officially founded, its first modern art collection acquisitions were presented to the public at Nelahozeves in 1963.
In 1965 a permanent exhibition of the gallery’s collection was opened at Nelahozeves, which was then gradually altered and renewed. A series of monographic exhibitions in the field of modern and contemporary Czech art also took place there. In 1971 the permanent exhibition of Czech modern art was discontinued as part of the post-1968 hard-line repression, and in 1977 it was replaced by a permanent exhibition of old European and particularly Spanish art from the Roudnice-Lobkowicz collection. This collection, along with Nelahozeves Castle itself, was returned to its original owners as part of restitution in 1993.
Selected bibliography:
Vlk, M., Bauerová, A.: Zámek v Nelahozevsi. Jeho historie a obnova [Nelahozeves Castle. Its History and Renewal]. Prague, Středočeská galerie v Praze 1984.
Vlk, M.: Nelahozeves / Zámek–Schloss–Castle–Chateau. Prague, Středočeská galerie v Praze 1992.