The play Betrug der Allamoda and prints based on drawings and designs by Fabián Václav Harovník

Title: The play Betrug der Allamoda and prints based on drawings and designs by Fabián Václav Harovník
Variant title:
  • Divadelní hra Betrug der Allamoda a grafické listy podle návrhů Fabiána Václava Harovníka
Contributor
Cassling, Robin (Translator)
Source document: Opuscula historiae artium. 2020, vol. 69, iss. 2, pp. 124-143
Extent
124-143
  • ISSN
    1211-7390 (print)
    2336-4467 (online)
Type: Article
Language
Summary language
License: Not specified license
Rights access
embargoed access
 

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Abstract(s)
The article is the first to publish the discovery of seven prints that capture scenes from the play Betrug der Allamoda, a copy of which was recently discovered in the collections of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (USA). This play, which was staged in Prague in 1660 at the initiative of Jan František Bruntálský of Vrbno (1634–1705), is a German translation of the successful Italian opera La Moda by Francesco Sbarra (1611–1668). Drawings by Prague artist Fabián Václav Harovník (active 1644–1683), who, it appears, also created the stage scenery for the production of the play and then the illustrations for the printed copy, served as the basis for a series of copperplate prints created by Jan Kryštof Smíšek and Petr Hoberk of Hendersdorf, known as Frater Constantinus (1625–1680). The article identifies the subject matter of the individual prints illustrating Betrug der Allamoda and compares them to seven prints from the play Fatum austriacum from the workshop of theatre architect and painter Elias Gedeler (1620–1693). It also deals with the question of the selection of scenes, their connection to the text of the play, and how they relate to the 17th-century production of prints on scenographic work at the Vienna Court.
Note
This article was written with the support of the Czech Science Foundation as part of work on the project Podvod Allamody – pražská divadelní událost roku 1660 (Allamoda's Deception – the Theatre Event of 1660 in Prague) (no. GA19-04939S).