"Four Continents"

The allegory cycle "Four Continents" is the work of the well-known Biedermeier painter Mihael Stroy.

The continents of Asia, Africa, Europe and America are represented by personifications of women placed in an ambience of the interior space or the landscape. All of them contain certain characteristic elements of a particular continent. The paintings were created in 1836, and they clearly display, through the prism of romance, the viewpoint of a European man on the exotic lands of distant continents. This affinity to exotic lands reached its peak just in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Mihael Stroy (1803 - 1871) came to Croatia in 1830 after studying in Vienna, and from then until 1842 he flourished in Zagreb. His painting activity was not only limited to the area of the city of Zagreb, but he often worked in the manorial castles and manor houses in Hrvatsko Zagorje, Varaždin, Samobor and the environs of these towns. During his stay in Croatia Stroy created a multitude of portraits of people who marked his age.