Sídla Jana Jiřího Jáchyma hraběte Slavaty z Chlumu u Košumberka (1634/37-1689) v proměně

Abstract

According to the life style, historians can divide baroque nobility in the Habsburg lands into four main groups. These are dukes, courtly oriented noblemen, landlords and gentry. One of the main criteria of such a dividing is the chosen career of each nobleman. In fact no one of them lived all his life having only one office or function. This is a result which can show also Jan Jáchym Slavata, count of Chlum and Košumberk. At first he tried to become a member of some court office in Vienna, but from 1673 he was a senior of his house and he spent the rest of his life in the land offices in Prague. Each carrer created the different space frame to his life style. Till 1673 he moved between his only northbohemian estate and Vienna. After 1673 he travelled each year between Prague and his family estates in South Bohemia and South Moravia. This article tries to answer, if the different space conditions of both his careers influenced his attitude to concrete country and town residences and if it changed his life style and his individual thinking. Slavata, as it was usual in the second half of 17th century, spent often more than two thirds of every year in his town residences and he had to respect it in his attitude to his castles and palaces. Due to his bad financial situation he could not create special residential plan before 1673. Then he became very rich and powerful after the death of his brother. During his land career he hought of a new residential possibilities but his plans were completed only partly. At first he wanted to build a new, more representative palace in the place of his career, in Prague. He tried to enlarge his family palace and he created a new suburban residence including a large baroque garden that had not be seen in Prague yet. In the second phase of his plan he focused on his country estates. He hid not think of any new naroque castle because he wanted to rebuild present interiors only. He tried to follow modern requirements for more pleasant living and for better representating of his relations to the Habsburg house and to the Kingdom of Bohemia. In his main country residence in Jindřichův Hradec he built a central early baroque representative rooms, mainly so called Spanish hall. In Nová Bystřice he placed a large collection of the paintings and engravements that showed chosen scenes from the Bohemian history. In Červená Lhota and Chlum u Třeboně he owned small hunting castles that were used only for several days during each year. So he created very private life conditions there. The interiors of his palaces and castles tell us about the nobleman whose life and thinking moved between Catholic cosmopolitism and Bohemian lan historism and patriotism.