a Czech painter of the late Baroque, famous in his time but – due to isolation behind the Iron Curtain – rather forgotten until recently. He was of German-speaking Austrian descent in the bilingual Kingdom of Bohemia. His mother was from Czech peasant family, that lived in P?estanice (a village in Bohemia, now part of Hlav?ovice). He was born into a craftsman’s family (his father seems to have been a goldsmith) and apprenticed around 1683–1688 to Kristián Schröder (1655–1702).Brandl employed strong chiaroscuro, areas of heavy impasto and very plastic as well as dramatic figures.
