lateral pylons of the façade, he has only lengthened the reins of the horses just so far as the frame allowed. Accordingly the architect entrusted him with almost the whole sculptural and ornamental decoration of the building, the cornices and corbels, friezes, wreaths and disks, a rich store of Renaissance forms tastefully disposed and combined. Subsequently, Schnirch took part in nearly all the erections of a monumental character that were being set up in Prague during this period of revival. But the discipline he put upon himself—voluntarily at first—in order to remain subordinate to the architect, in the end cramped his style as a sculptor even where he should have asserted his creative freedom. Thus his large equestrian statue of King George of Poděbrad is, as it were, the frigid paradigm of a stiff rider on a lifeless horse, and his portraits, void of inner warmth, seem as cold as masks. A sort of screen had interposed itself between him and reality, forbidding him to see clearly and feel naturally. He made up for his lack of feeling by an excess of intellectuality, and his work suffers accordingly. Once, and once only, he startled the public by a work replete with glowing life, when he nearly defeated a youthful rival in the open competition for the St. Wenceslaus monument. The issue was long in doubt, but finally the younger man won the day, and we can now see that Schnirch, despite himself, had come under the ascendancy of his successful rival, and owed to him whatever was meritorious in his plan.
This rival, Josef Václav Myslbek, was at last to give Czech sculpture what it had hitherto lacked, the inspiring example of a real creative effort. He is the first in Bohemia whose art is free from all academic influence, and borrows nothing from the antique or the Renaissance. From Levý, whose pupil he was for a short time, he received nothing but the preliminary encouragement to sincere and unremitting labour. He was not one to
