© Moravská galerie v Brně © Moravská galerie v Brně © Moravská galerie v Brně

P. Troger, The Worshio of Pallas Athene



Name of Object:

The Worship of Pallas Athene

Location:

Governor’s Palace, Brno, Moravia, Czech Republic

Holding Museum:

Moravian Gallery, Brno

 About Moravian Gallery, Brno , Governor’s Palace, Brno

Original Owner:

Josef Winterhalder Sr

Current Owner:

Moravian Gallery, Brno

Date of Object:

1723

Artist(s) / Craftsperson(s):

Paul Troger (1698, Zell/Welsberg-1762, Vienna)

Museum Inventory Number:

B 54

Material(s) / Technique(s):

Pen and brown ink on paper

Dimensions:

h: 30.7 cm; w: 21.6 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Brno

Type of object:

Drawing

Place of production:

Vienna?

Description:

The scene shows a statue of Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom, on an altar. A group of putti are garlanding the statue, while their companions pour incense into an offering vessel. The drawing was inspired by Paul Troger's time in Italy, a period of several years. Together with Martin van Meytens among others, he “studied ancient monuments in the vicinity of Rome with such unceasing diligence that very often we only made do, for days, with bread and water in order to continue with our study without disturbance”. The artist modelled the central motif on a statue of Pallas Athene from the famous collection of ancient art assembled by Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani (now in the Vatican Museum, Rome). The statue was also known from a print of 1631 and from pictorial publications on ancient sculpture. Paul Troger employed a subject similar to the Brno drawing in an etching from 1724, the origin of which is provably associated with the artist's stay in Rome. Troger's etching and the Brno drawing resemble the engraving technique of Venetian peintre-graveur, using a fine grid for the modelling and to capture transitions in light. Typical examples may be found in the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), a major exponent of Italian Settecento painting. The subject of adoration of the goddess of wisdom reflects the growing emphasis placed on education at the time. Troger's unfinished drawing probably served as a template for a print celebrating Wisdom. The principal motif is worked up in detail, while the accompanying figures of putti and the landscape in the background are sketched in pencil. Continuous wavy lines give evidence of a swift and expressive drawing manner. The artist was an influential professor of the Vienna Academy and was a leading Central European painter of the 18th century.

View Short Description

The drawing of a statue of Pallas Athene was inspired by Paul Troger's long stay in Italy. Its execution resembles Venetian peintre-graveur. The unfinished drawing was probably to serve as a template for a print celebrating Wisdom.

How date and origin were established:

The determination of the artist is based on a confirmed provenance. Troger's authorship is proven, in particular, by the distinctive faces of the putti and the brisk drawing manner.

How Object was obtained:

The drawing probably comes from the estate of the sculptor Josef Winterhalder Sr., a friend of Troger. It was donated to the gallery by Mrs Trapp before 1963, and was previously found in the collections of the archivist and historian Jan Petr Cerroni and Mořic Wilhelm Trapp, a curator of the Francis Museum in Brno.

Selected bibliography:

Wanda Aschenbrenner – Gregor Schweighofer, Paul Troger, Leben und Werk, Salzburg, 1965, p. 130, cat. 14, p. 154.
Lubomír Slavíček, in Jiří Kroupa (ed), Dans le miroir des ombres. La Moravie a la age baroque 1760–1790, Brno–Paris–Rennes, 2002, p. 249, cat. 93.
Jiří Kroupa, in Eduard Hindelang – Lubomír Slavíček, Franz Anton Maulbertsch und Mitteleuropa, Festschrift zum 30jährigen Bestehen des Museums Langenargen, Langenargen–Brno, 2007, pp. 27–28.

Citation of this web page:

Zora Wörgötter "The Worship of Pallas Athene" in "Discover Baroque Art", Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://baroqueart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;BAR;cz;Mus11;12;en

Prepared by: Zora WörgötterZora Wörgötter

SURNAME: Wörgötter
NAME: Zora

AFFILIATION: Moravian Gallery in Brno

TITLE: Museum Curator and Local Co-ordinator

CV:
Zora Wörgötter studied Applied Painting at the Secondary School of Applied Arts, Video Art (Faculty of Fine Arts) at the University of Technology in Brno and Art History and Ethnology (Faculty of Arts) at Masaryk University, Brno. She has worked at the Moravian Gallery since 1997 and was curator of the Ancient Art Collection up until 2008. Specialising in Dutch and Central European painting of the 17th and 18th centuries, she has participated in the preparation of several exhibitions, catalogues and research projects in the Czech Republic and abroad, and published in the Moravian Gallery Bulletin, Opuscula historiae artium, and other journals. She is co-ordinator of the Art History Database www.ahice.net for the Czech Republic.

Copyedited by: Jiří KroupaJiří Kroupa

SURNAME: Kroupa
NAME: Jiří

AFFILIATION: Department of the History of Art (Faculty of Arts) Masaryk
University, Brno

TITLE: Professor

CV:
Professor Jiří Kroupa studied Art History, History and Sociology Masaryk University, Brno. He was a curator at the Kroměříž Museum and the Moravian Gallery in Brno before joining the staff at Masaryk University in 1988 (Head of the Department 1992–2002; Professor 1999 to present). His particular fields of interest are in the history of architecture, 18th-century cultural history and the methodology of art history. His long list of publications includes an edition on the architect Franz Anton Grimm and an essay “The alchemy of happiness: the Enlightenment in the Moravian context”. He was contributing editor for the volume Dans le miroir des ombres. Moravie a la age baroque. 1670–1790 (2002).

Translation by: Irma Charvátová
Translation copyedited by: Mandi GomezMandi Gomez

Amanda Gomez is a freelance copy-editor and proofreader working in London. She studied Art History and Literature at Essex University (1986–89) and received her MA (Area Studies Africa: Art, Literature, African Thought) from SOAS in 1990. She worked as an editorial assistant for the independent publisher Bellew Publishing (1991–94) and studied at Bookhouse and the London College of Printing on day release. She was publications officer at the Museum of London until 2000 and then took a role at Art Books International, where she worked on projects for independent publishers and arts institutions that included MWNF’s English-language editions of the books series Islamic Art in the Mediterranean. She was part of the editorial team for further MWNF iterations: Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean Virtual Museum and the illustrated volume Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean.

True to its ethos of connecting people through the arts, MWNF has provided Amanda with valuable opportunities for discovery and learning, increased her editorial experience, and connected her with publishers and institutions all over the world. More recently, the projects she has worked on include MWNF’s Sharing History Virtual Museum and Exhibition series, Vitra Design Museum’s Victor Papanek and Objects of Desire, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s online publication 2 or 3 Tigers and its volume Race, Nation, Class.

MWNF Working Number: CZ 13

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