Václav Levý

[2] Upon returning from Dresden, he made the chance acquaintance of Antonín Veith, a landowner who was also a patron of the arts, and entered his service as a cook at his estate in Liběchov village near Mělník in 1844.

[2] His talent for sculpture was soon noticed by many of Veith's guests and, on the advice of the painter Josef Matěj Navrátil, he was sent to Prague to study with the sculptor František Xaver Linn (1802–1848).

[2] It was there, in 1845, at the suggestion of Veith's librarian, an Augustinian professor from Brno named František Klácel, that Levý began creating the reliefs on a rock massif situated in wooded hill near Liběchov that are now known as the "Klácelka Cave."

[3] Veith fell into financial difficulties and died suddenly in 1853, but Levý was able to survive as a free-lance sculptor and soon received a commission from the Sisters of Mercy Hospital near Petřín Hill in Prague.

He was given contracts for decorating the tympanum at the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius and sculptural adornments for St. Vitus Cathedral,[2] but his worsening health gradually decreased his ability to work and he came to rely on his best student, Josef Václav Myslbek, whom he had met in Vienna.