Nine Muses and a Poet by Professor Karel Míšek from Sutnarka now adorns the Litomyšl castle

The author of the new sgraffito decoration on Litomyšl Castle, Karel Míšek, head of the Graphic Design studio at Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at UWB. His design for the UNESCO-listed site won the National Heritage Institute's competition.

Václav Boštík, Olbram Zoubek, Zdeněk Palcr, and Stanislav Podhrázský were prominent Czech visual artists of the second half of the 20th century who took part in the restoration of Litomyšl Castle in the 1970s and 1980s. This year, Karel Míšek, head of the Graphic Design and Visual Communication studio at Sutnarka, continues their tradition — his design for the new sgraffito decoration on the northwestern lunette cornice was selected by an expert panel in a nationwide competition announced by the National Heritage Institute.

"I was aware that the castle is an exceptional Renaissance monument unparalleled in its complexity. The question arose of how to grasp this relationship to the past," said the author. For the eighty-meter-long and three-meter-high surface, he created his own libretto, developing the story of the nine muses and a poet. The result is a pictorial narrative that follows the character of the original Renaissance sgraffiti while also telling a new story.

After Míšek's design was selected, full-scale (1:1) cartoons were prepared to serve as templates. The motif depicted on the cornice references the European classical and Renaissance tradition with a light touch of exaggeration and wit. "I decided on a figural expression in which female figures play the main role, thereby expressing the varied symbolism of femininity: love, beauty, fertility, motherhood, family, and happiness," the author explained. "The goal was for every viewer to take away their own distinctive experience and find their personal meaning within the richness of the drawing."

In creating the design, Professor Míšek addressed not only the artistic concept but also the site's specific conditions. The northwestern side of the castle, facing the park, offers views from various height levels while receiving only limited light. "From the beginning, it was clear to me that I had to find strong content and express it so that visitors could identify the individual parts of the sgraffito based on the story. So that it wasn't just the shape aesthetics that mattered, but above all the rhythm and alternation of views in relation to the compositional arrangement," he concluded.