Stone, Stucco and Terracotta / Sculpture from Prague Gardens

An integral part of Prague’s historical gardens was their artistic decoration and small-scale architecture. The various sculptures and decorative elements installed there told either their own stories, or drew attention to the status and personal likings of a site’s owner. Exposed over long decades to the follies of weather, these artefacts gradually disappeared from their garden locations. While some have been irretrievably lost, others have been replaced by copies. The Troja Château exhibition will present a selection of original sculptures from the Vrtba Garden or the Cibulka landscape park, along with surviving fragments of Troja Château’s own early Baroque garden statuary, and specimens from the Kinsky Garden, plus an array of busts from Portheimka summer retreat. The show’s title relates to the favourite materials used in garden decoration, as well as to the fragmentariness and coarse condition of the exhibits, which have been kept in museum repositories in the same condition as they were found, usually without being restored for display purposes.