Petr Brandl
Petr Brandl was a Czech painter of the late Baroque. He was of German-speaking Austrian descent in the bilingual Kingdom of Bohemia.
Brandl was famous in his time but – due to isolation behind the Iron Curtain – rather forgotten until recently. Brandl employed strong chiaroscuro, areas of heavy impasto and very plastic as well as dramatic figures.
His mother was from Czech peasant family, that lived in Přestanice. According to the Grove Dictionary of Art and other sources, Brandl was born into a craftsman's family and apprenticed around 1683–1688 to Kristián Schröder.
The National Gallery in Prague, has an entire hall devoted to the artist's works, including "Bust of an Apostle" from some time before 1725.
The artist is a distant ancestor of both contemporary Austrian painter Herbert Brandl and contemporary American-Swiss painter Mark Staff Brandl.Gallery
