General reading room

The summer refectory, which has served as the General Reading Room since the reconstruction of the Klementinum by Ladislav Machon (1929), was built after 1669 by the Italian architect Francesco Lurago, who took over the building from his uncle Carlo Lurago. The front wall of the hall is decorated with a large oil painting of the Marriage at Cana of Galilee, designed by the Jesuit architect and painter Andrea Pozzo and executed by his pupil and successor Christoph Tausch in 1710 (the year is indicated on the dog's collar in the left corner). On the opposite wall, at the entrance to the refectory, a fresco by the order's painter Jan Kuben depicts the Visitation of Christ in the Lazarus House (probably already in 1738). The centre of the fresco is overlaid with a six-metre high rococo tiled stove from 1762 with reliefs of Jesuit saints (with the dominant figure of St Ignatius in the higher part and in the foreground with St Francis Xavier baptizing pagans, Stanislaus Kostka, etc.). The portals on their sides have original wooden panelling (around 1680).