Frantisek Rint – baroque and berserk?

Posted by Vale

Back in 1278 an Abbot of Sedlec came back to Kutna Hora with some earth from Golgotha in his travel bags.

He scattered it in the cemetery and created the most famous and popular necropolis in Bohemia and Central Europe.

Grave space was at a premium and, sometime after 1400, a chapel and charnel house was built. The ossuary is now estimated to hold the remains of some 40,000 people.

But it isn’t the numbers that astonish. In the 19^th century a wood carver called Frantisek Rint began to make things – baroque, fantastical and unlikely – from the bones. The chandelier is only one of his many creations:

If you want to visit Kutna Hora there is information here.

If you want to see more photographs try here.