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The statue of St. Anthony of Padua on Charles Bridge is complete again. The statue has regained two vases which had been destroyed by vandals over the years.

Prague City Gallery had the newly-sculpted vases installed only a few days ahead of 13th June, the day on which the death of St. Anthony of Padua is commemorated. The vases have relief designs depicting the life and deeds of St. Anthony.

Vases under attack from vandals

The statue, or rather the vases, have had an unsettled history. One of them disappeared at the beginning of the 20th Century; the other was damaged by vandals. Both were replaced by roughly hewn copies without surface relief.

Divers helped

The reconstruction of both vases was more a case of detective work. The sculptor of both new vases, Academic Sculptor Martina Hozová, worked with staff from Prague City Gallery to create authentic vases. They were helped in this work by divers who discovered a large fragment of the lost vase in 2009 while searching for the pillars of Judith Bridge.

“We managed to identify the scene of St. Francis and the donkey bowing before the saint with alter-bread in his hand,” said Petra Hoftichová from Prague City Gallery.

Detective work

As with the relief designs on the vases the lids were also created as the result of detective work. In the end Martina Hozová was able to reconstruct the appearance of the lids. It isn’t the first time she has worked on similar assignments in Prague. The copy of the Baroque statue of Diana in Vrtbovská Garden is the work of Hozová. The vases were made from fine-grained Hořice sandstone, which allows similarly fine modelling as the original stone, so-called Prague sandstone.

“The sculptor has fully recreated the original style of Jan Oldřich Mayer, who was also the creator of other sculptures on Charles Bridge, the pair of statues of Cosmas and Damian with Christ the Redeemer, and the statue of St. Jude Thaddeus,” said Hoftichová.

What you will see on the vases

“The two vases are returning to the bridge in distinctly similar form to the originals with painstakingly detailed reliefs,” said Petra Hoftichová. The view of the vases from the bridge shows St. Anthony preaching to the fish and the resurrection of the young man. The scene depicting the kneeling donkey which was brought, hungry, to the saint and was not able of swallow the “Body of Christ” will remain hidden from the view of most visitors on the side of the vase above the Vltava.

Statue and Saint

The order for a statue of St. Anthony of Padua for Charles Bridge was placed by the Burgrave’s Court councillor, Kryštof Mořic Wittauer. St. Anthony of Padua was born on 15th August 1195 in Lisbon. At the age of 15 he joined the Augustinian order but when he saw the fate of five Franciscans, who were martyred in Marocco in 1220, he converted to the Franciscan order and went to a mission in Africa. After numerous peripetia he became a preacher in Lombardy and taught at the Universities of Montpellier and Toulouse. Anthony’s preaching was so entrancing and yet so striking that he became known as the “Hammer of Heretics” and Pope Gregory IX dubbed him the “Ark of the Covenant”. He founded several monasteries, settled in Padua and in the nearby village of Campo di San Pietro he took his final rest. This was on 13th June 1231.

He was Cannonised only 11 months after his death. His attributes include lilies, altar bread, a treasure chest, a cross, a book, bread and the Christ child. He is the patron saint of happy marriage, women and children, poor people, travellers, old people, bakers, miners, ship-builders, sailors, castaways, swineherds and postmen. His assistance is called upon in searching for lost things, for easy birth, against infertility, against fever, to prevent illness in livestock, against the plague, against shipwreck and against wartime suffering. He is most commonly portrayed preaching to the fish or with the donkey kneeling before the altar-bread in his hands.

Source: Charles Bridge Museum