German and Austrian paintings of the 17th century in the National Gallery in Prague

The collection of German and Austrian painting of the 17th and 18th centuries includes over 600 paintings. Out of this number, seventeenth-century painting totals 190 works reflecting the various stages of the development of painting in Austrian and German lands. At the same time, this ensemble mirrors the development of collectorship from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The aim of the textual part of the presented catalogue is to briefly define the turning points in the development of art in Germany and Austria. The catalogue does not want to summarize the history of German art, it rather focuses on some tendencies that are deemed important in view of the artistic contribution of selected painters in the context of the National Gallery in Prague collection. One of the tasks of the catalogue was to revise the circle of works traditionally attributed to 17th-century German and Austrian schools and delimit the group of the paintings included in the catalogue. It is thus divided into three sections, namely: "Paintings by Known Artists", "Paintings by Anonymous Artists", and "Supplements". The last named part contains paintings formerly considered works of German painters. Those are paintings that with all probability came into existence within the frame of other schools, and also copies after models from other..