portion of his Slavín. The native sculptors were mere artisans, engaged on trifling, casual orders scarcely flattering either to their ambition or to their pride. About the middle of the century two Germans, the brothers Max, attained the first place among sculptors in Bohemia. A few monuments and statues serving to decorate the Charles Bridge in Prague were the uninspired products of this barren epoch.
But already, while these two Germans were enjoying their ill-deserved renown, the first Czech sculptor, Václav Levý, a self-taught artist, was hewing from the sandstone rocks of the picturesque Liběchov, groups and isolated figures drawn from Czech history and folklore. A romantic temperament, violent and still undisciplined, is here seen struggling towards self-expression, boldly shaping the material under the impulse of a powerful instinct for plasticity. He was afterwards sent to study under Schwanthaler at Munich; he returned as a mature artist in 1848, yet obtained no orders in Prague. Accordingly he left there his masterpiece, “Adam and Eve,” and—as a travelling scholarship afforded him the means of living abroad—betook himself to Rome, drawn to that city by his pious leanings. He remained there for many years, joining that group of Catholic-minded artists known as “Nazarenes,” whose ascetic conception of art was soon to sap the healthy instincts of his youth.
The next generation could hardly, in the nature of things, produce any men of real talent. The academic idealism of the preceding period burdened it with a heavier load than it had the courage to shake off. It was mainly for churches and cemeteries that sculptors were called upon to work, but even when they received orders that demanded a closer contact with realities, they were unable to abandon the conventional and the trite. They were eclectics out of touch with real life, invertebrates lacking in the will to create. Antonín Wagner, a persevering
