The Archdiocesan Museum in Olomouc has reopened its permanent exhibition

Olomouc - Archdiocesan Museum in Olomouc today enriched its permanent exhibition with new gems of sacred art. New exhibits are located in three places - the Picture Gallery, the Neptune Hall, and the Chapel of Saint Barbara. They include paintings and liturgical objects. The changes were required by regulations that stipulate the length of presentation for certain works of art. However, the changes are also in the museum's interest, as the renewed exhibition can attract visitors who have already visited the museum in the past, said museum spokesman Petr Bielesz today to ČTK.
    The changes will primarily affect the Picture Gallery of the bishops and archbishops of Olomouc in the museum. The offer will be complemented by five new paintings. The most valuable of these is the Madonna with Animals, painted around 1503 by an anonymous follower of the Renaissance giant Albrecht Dürer. According to art historians, the Dutch author likely tried to imitate his German teacher not only in composition but also in intricate details. The painting was displayed for the first and last time in 1900 in Olomouc. For the needs of the Archdiocesan Museum, it was restored in 2004 and 2005, and from June to October, it was admired by visitors at the exhibition Albrecht Dürer - Rosary Feast 1506-2006 at the National Gallery in Prague.
    Another novelty is the Baroque painting Ecce homo, which was created after 1660. Its author is the representative of the Bolognese school of painting, Elisabeta Sirani. Visitors will also see the large, nearly two-meter-high canvas The Lamentation of Christ by the Italian mannerist Marcello Venusti, known as Mantovano, whose work was decisively influenced by a personal meeting with Michelangelo. Another new painting is The Praying St. Francis of Assisi by the Italian painter Daniele Crespi or the painting Mystical Betrothal of St. Catherine. The canvas from the second half of the 17th century will replace the Italian master's Nursing Madonna from 1650 for five months, which the Museum of Art Olomouc has loaned for an exhibition in Vienna.
    Visitors will also find a renewed exhibition in the Chapel of Saint Barbara at the Archdiocesan Museum, which features new liturgical objects. The exhibited items come from the Cathedral of St. Wenceslaus, and a remarkable component is the enameled chalice, made for Archbishop Cardinal Bedřich von Fürstenberg. In the Neptune Hall, the painting by Josef Führich, The Burial of Christ, is newly on display. The canvas, created before 1836, comes from the collections of the Archbishop's Castle and Gardens in Kroměříž.
    The Archdiocesan Museum in Olomouc was opened on June 1 of this year. In its permanent exhibition, it showcases all artistic disciplines from Romanesque art, Gothic, through Mannerism and Baroque to Rococo. A separate exhibit is the area of the national cultural monument Přemysl Castle, which has been continuously inhabited for 6000 years according to archaeologists' findings. In five months, nearly 42,000 people have visited the museum.