The play Betrug der Allamoda and prints based on drawings and designs by Fabián Václav Harovník

The article is the first to publish the discovery of seven prints that capture scenes from the play Betrug der Allamoda, a copy of which was recently discovered in the collections of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (USA). This play, which was staged in Prague in 1660 at the initiative of Jan František Bruntálský of Vrbno (1634–1705), is a German translation of the successful Italian opera La Moda by Francesco Sbarra (1611–1668). Drawings by Prague artist Fabián Václav Harovník (active 1644–1683), who, it appears, also created the stage scenery for the production of the play and then the illustrations for the printed copy, served as the basis for a series of copperplate prints created by Jan Kryštof Smíšek and Petr Hoberk of Hendersdorf, known as Frater Constantinus (1625–1680). The article identifies the subject matter of the individual prints illustrating Betrug der Allamoda and compares them to seven prints from the play Fatum austriacum from the workshop of theatre architect and painter Elias Gedeler (1620–1693). It also deals with the question of the selection of scenes, their connection to the text of the play, and how they relate to the 17th-century production of prints on scenographic work at the Vienna Court.