Vladislav Hall Completed

JAN 01 1502 · 12:00

Benedikt Ried's late-Gothic ribbed vault soars over the Vladislav Hall, completed 1502, the largest secular hall in central Europe. Place: Royal palace, Prague Castle Figures: Benedikt Ried of Piesting, royal architect · Vladislaus II Jagiellon, patron · the masons of the Prague lodge Benedikt Ried begins work on the royal palace at Prague Castle in 1493, replacing the burned-out hall of the old Přemyslid residence. He finishes the throne room nine years later, in 1502. The Vladislav Hall is sixty-two meters long, sixteen wide, thirteen high, and supports a single unbroken vault across the entire span. There are no internal columns. The five double bays are spanned by intersecting ribs that branch, curl, and return on themselves in patterns that have nothing to do with the structural geometry beneath. The ribs are decoration. The vault is held up by the wall buttresses, in a way that the vaults of Beauvais and Cologne, with their forests of soaring shafts, do not need to pretend. The windows are something else entirely. Tall, rectangular, framed by pilasters and pediments, they are the earliest Renaissance windows in Central Europe, set into a thoroughly Gothic stone shell. Ried has clearly seen Italian work, or seen drawings of it. He grafts the new ornament onto the old structure with the deliberate confidence of someone who does not believe the two are incompatible.