The article focuses on the personality of Matouš Radouš, a painter, (†1631), of the
town Chrudim, and with his outstanding and partly well preserved work – the epitaphs of
prominent Chrudim burghers. Extraordinary position of Matouš Radouš lies in the fact that
we only know a few painters of Czech origin in the period of Renaissance. Thanks to the
sufficient archive sources, we know a lot of his life and together with his paintings, still
preserved in Chrudim churches (in Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St.
Michael) they were intended for, we can imagine how the local Late Renaissance workshop
functioned. The research into the life and work of the “regional” Renaissance painter
Matouš Radouš has several aspects. One of them is formal characteristic of the epitaphs
representing a typical Central-European works of art adopting the Mannerist art influence
mediated though the court of Rudolph II in Prague. We can observe how compositions of
Matouš Radouš´ epitaphs reflect the figural canon and the patterns of international Mannerism,
transmitted especially by graphics. Nevertheless, the character of Radouš represents
a typical local “shift” from the exclusive court art and the art of a rather low formal quality.
On the other hand, formal aspect of Radouš´ artistic production should not be the only one
to appreciate his works of art. The unique group of Chrudim epitaphs (produced between
1580 and 1630) by Radouš and his collaborators represent a source of this kind. On the one
hand, the epitaphs reflect social position of civic elite in Early Modern Chrudim and special
culture of creating personal and social remembrance. On the other hand, the epitaphs witnessed
the interesting confessional situation in the town. In some cases, a very original
iconography of these epitaphs (e.g. the motif of Allegoric Crucifixion) proves that the commissioners
of this monument were non-Catholics. The change in iconography after the
White Mountain Battle, using the new Catholic motifs (esp. of the Virgin Mary) shows that
the confessional situation in the town was also changed in favour of Catholicism. Last but
not least, the unique epitaphs by Radouš not only represent the “works of art”, but they also
stand for special records of a great historical-anthropological value