Among my favorite things so far in Prague is the statuary. A very unscientific and impressionistic comparison of the Ars Statuaria Pragensis and Ars Statuaria Romana follows, with a few pictures as leavening. I could probably write this up as a longer art-historical essay, but (1) that would take a lot of time and (2) this is a blog. So instead, you get notes.

First of all, classical figures are all over Rome, and appear nowhere that I have seen in Prague. Religious sculpture (to an unsystematic observer) in Rome also appears to be very heavily dominated by only a small number of figures, almost to the exclusion of others: Mary and Jesus (whether infant and deceased), Popes, and Saints Peter and Paul. Statues also (especially in Saint Peter’s) tend toward the massive.

By contrast, the statuary of Prague appears to be physically smaller, and to contain a much larger number of figures of local and/or national(ist) importance. Jan Hus, for example, appears prominently in a number of places in Prague, something that would be *ahem* unlikely to happen in Rome. Figures of emperors (especially Charles/Karel IV) are relatively prominent, as well as figures of kings (especially Wenceslas) exist in fairly substantial numbers, unlike in Rome where the only places emperors or kings tend to appear is as adversaries or references to the Donation of Constantine. The mixture of “secular” and “religious” figures around the base of this statue from one of the plazas around the Hrad is (I think) noteworthy in this regard:


Here, two men wearing crowns (Karel IV and some other guy?) preside over a friar giving communion, a man adoring the crucifix, and a woman distributing bread.


On the other side of the statue, a bishop is poised above an armored man with a spear (Sigismund?) with two studious figures to the right and left.

Even when the ‘international’ figures predominate, the results have a very different tone than the equivalent structure in Rome might: the Jesuit church in Mala Strana, sv Mikulas, contains its share of Church Fathers along with enormous statues of Saints Ignatius and Xavier, plus some more classically-inspired bits: four virtues personified as women around the dome of the church. None of the saints that I was able to get decent pictures could be considered local by any stretch of the imagination. It’s interesting to note the “missionary” emphasis of all the statuary, however – Ignatius is pictured spearing a heretic (or the devil?) with a lightning bolt:


…Xavier is converting a heretic:


…and the four Church Fathers chosen were all well-known for confrontations with pagans (Saint Basil, Gregory of Nazianus, John Chrysostom, and Cyril the Alexandrian. Cyril, for example, is subtly (or not-so-subtly) spearing a (presumed) pagan in the neck with the end of his staff.


Even here, there are also a series of statues of “secular” rulers to be found (they’re less blurry in person):
Constantine


Cyrus


A guy


Another guy


To sum up, perhaps this is a result of the fact that we didn’t spend enough time in Rome, but I still maintain that the (to me) distinctly tone of one of the most important churches in Prague speaks to a substantially different Czech ‘brand’ of Christianity: imperial (or imperially-influenced) and stamped more deeply by confrontation with paganism and heresy.

Already I can see a huge amount of imprecision and gross generalization here. But rather than give in to the historian’s urge to contextualize, I’m going to go ahead and stand pat with my errors.