The Beneš family crypt, done in an austere Neorenaissance style, is an example of a successful collaboration between sculptor, architect, and master craftsmen. In this case, an older family crypt was remodeled to honor the memory of Václav Beneš, a Prague hotelier and patron of many patriotic associations. In 1876, as owner of the Archduke Stephen Hotel, Beneš became a contributing member of the Union for the Completion of St. Vitus's Cathedral, and in the 1880s, when he owned the Hotel de Saxe on Hybernská Street (nos. 998–4, 997–2), he was a member of the Committee for the Establishment of a Czech National Theatre, the Cooperative Society of the Royal Bohemian and National Theatre, the Association for the Promotion of Foreign Visitors to Prague and Environs, and the Union of Prague Citizens. As a member of the Society for the Promotion of Horticulture, he liked to show off the garden products from his Hercovka Villa (previously the Haase family estate) in Prague-Dejvice.
When Beneš died suddenly of a stroke in March 1896, his widow Josefa (née Burešová) honored his memory by making donations to other charitable organizations. The deceased was buried in the family crypt at Olšany, but the family apparently felt that the existing monument did not reflect the grandeur of his legacy. They thus turned to Josef Václav Myslbek, who, even though he was busy with the St. Wenceslas monument, worked on the commission conscientiously – as evidenced by his diary entries and surviving sketches of the original monument and its new form, including several alternatives for the placement of the angel statue. The budget of 12,520 gulden (12,180, respectively) included the angel (6,000 gulden for the model; 4,000 gulden for the bronze casting) and an eventually unrealized Christ in the Tomb (500 gulden for the plaster model; 400 gulden for the bronze casting). In April 1897, after the budget's approval by Mrs. Benešová and payment of the first installment, Myslbek paid Antonín Barvitius, an established designer of funerary architecture with whom he had previously collaborated in the 1880s (among other things, on a funerary monument for Karel Sladkovský), 100 gulden to produce architectural sketches.
Myslbek also made a small plaster model of the angel, which today is in the collections of the National Gallery in Prague. Upon approval by the client, a full-sized bronze cast was made at the Bendelmayer foundry. The figure was installed in May, and the completed monument was delivered on 28 October 1900.
The Angel of Peace – which Myslbek's students Josef Mařatka and Emanuel Halmann may have worked on as well – was praised in Světozor magazine soon after its completion, and its merits were later extolled by Václav Vilém Štech and Alois Lodr, the latter of whom also drew attention to Myslbek's earlier angel for the Olšany crypt of the architect Alois Turek (III, 2, 42) – likewise with an architectural design by Barvitius. At the Beneš crypt, however, the architecture is somewhat overshadowed by the sculpture, as is the mosaic on the tympanum, which during restoration work in 2014 was attributed to the Neuhauser firm of Innsbruck. The monument's final appearance is more austere than Myslbek's original sketches and reflects the tendency toward simplification that characterizes Barvitius's later funerary architecture.
Also buried in the crypt besides members of the Beneš family are Josefa (von) Ursýn-Pruszyńská, the wife of a royal and imperial major and mother of the dancer, choreographer, and journalist Is(id)a Nováková-Pruszyńská; and Lieutenant Colonel Dr. František Novák, a legionnaire, participant in battles against the Hungarian Red Army, and member of T. G. Masaryk's personal security detail.

Petr Sládeček, 2025