Petr Brandl

Who was Petr Brandl?

Petr Brandl was a painter of the late Baroque, famous in his time but - due to isolation behind the Iron Curtain - rather forgotten until recently. He was of German-speaking Austrian descent in the bilingual kingdom of Bohemia. His mother was from Czech peasant family, that lived in Přestanice. According to the Grove Dictionary of Art and other sources, Brandl was born into a craftsman’s family and apprenticed around 1683–1688 to Kristián Schröder.

Brandl employed strong chiaroscuro, areas of heavy impasto and very plastic as well as dramatic figures. The major art museum in Prague, called the National Gallery, has an entire hall devoted to the artist's works, including the wonderful "Bust of an Apostle" from some time before 1725.

The artist is a distant ancestor of both contemporary Austrian painter Herbert Brandl and contemporary American and Swiss painter Mark Staff Brandl.