Lesnická 1155/8

This flying art nouveau figure from 1907 looks like an allegorical representation of vanity: she is holding a mirror after all, and her floating cloak seems to be impossibly thin and insubstantial.

But the clue is in the linden leaves, which show that she is more likely to be symbolic of the national spirit of the Czechs. Whatever her origin, her purpose is to support the oriel window of a historicist apartment building in Prague’s Smíchov district designed by Karel Vitězlav Mašek.