Jozef Hoššo
The discovery of Žilina
castle
The construction of underground parking at Hurbanova street
in Žilina leant itself to an archaeological research under the supervision of
the author of this article and it took place from May to October 2008. A torso
of the foundations of a large circular building was unearthed at the place of
the lately demolished ground-floor houses, in close vicinity to the vicarage of
the parish church (originally consecrated to the Virgin Mary, but from the last
quarter of the 16th century to the Most Holy Trinity). The anniversary of the
first written evidence about Žilina, or rather Žilina’s larger surrounding area
(terra Selinan,) from 1208, highlighted the significance of the founding. Though
we cannot talk about the existing town of Žilina as such at the aforementioned
time, the settlement had undoubtedly started then. Archaeological findings of
the settlement remnants from the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries in the
Šefranica locality convincingly prove this.
In the late Medieval Ages,
Žilina was one of the most significant towns in the north-western region of
Slovakia.The Parish church had dominated the medieval town since the second half
of the 13th century. The second dominant building in Žilina territory, or in its
smaller or larger surroundings, was the Žilina castle itself (Castrum regis
Solna). The first written reference to the castle comes from 1318. A destructive
earthquake in the middle of the 14th century had rendered the castle desolate.
The last mention of the castle dates from 1454, when the Reeve Pankrác had to
give the castle back to King Ladislav Pohrobok (Ladislaus Posthumus). It is more
than likely that the castle had already lost its function as a permanently
occupied fortress. The opinions of historians on the castle’s location are even
more blurred than the information regarding its origin and extinction. The most
likely suggestion is the place near the parish church, which got built
subsequently after the castle’s construction as its pendant. The possibility of
identifying the castle with the archaeological finding of the foundations’ torso
of the circular fortified residential tower, made of quarry stones joined with a
quality lime mortar, complicates the later development of this territory. A set
of wooden buildings was probably built there in the Middle Ages, which was hit
by a fire in 1886 that completely destroyed the historical core of Žilina,
including the parish church. The groundwork which ensued during the debris
removal after the fire irretrievably destroyed the standard discovery
conditions, which could have made possible the dating of the tower’s
construction as well as that of Žilina castle itself.
Zuzana Ševčíková –
Tomáš Janura
The lowland fort of Rohovce
In the large
park of Rohovce, a municipality to be found south-east of Šamorín in southern
Slovakia, is a four-wing manor house with a central courtyard. Its facades are
simply divided in classicistic style with the addition of a neoclassic portico
at the renaissance portal leading to the garden. The research carried out in
2005 has revealed new historic connections and documented earlier development
phases of the building.
It had been established until recently that the
Rohovce manor house was originally a renaissance building dating from 1570,
which had been rebuilt in baroque style in the first half of the 18th century
and that the western façade had been adjusted in classicistic style in the first
half of the 19th century. The historical literature, however, speaks of a
fortified residence – “castle” or fort (castrum) well before 1570. The
considered architectural-historical and artistic-historical research, which also
included archival study, was to focus on the identification of individual phases
of the development movements as well as on the investigation of details and
technologies. The first construction phase from the 16th century represented by
now an extensive architecture. There was a closed asymmetrical courtyard with an
eastern corner protruding at an acute angle, which was suggestive of a bastion
that used to appear in what was then Hungary, under the influence of the Italian
defensive system.
Relics of authentic fortress architecture can be found
on the north-western side of the building below ground level. The Rohovce fort
also had loopholes at ground level, suggesting the presence of a defensive
surrounding water moat. The readily visible traces of the defensive water and
fortified system around the manor house bear evidence of the fortified castle
surrounded by water up until today. The archive documentation from 1745 also
makes mention of this – a preserved description of individual buildings for a
missing plan of the manor house also uses the name “fort”. The research has
revealed that before the first half of the 16th century, the renaissance lowland
fort (castrum) in Rohovce was a fortified economic and administration centre of
the estate, which was mainly of utility value without pretensions of any higher
representative ambitions. In the first half of the 18th century the Rohovce fort
was to experience a large constructional change. Rohovce was to become the
property of the Illesházy family and the administration residence of the local
estate changed into a residential and representative centre. In the second half
of the 19th century, the Rohovce estate was owned by the Batthyány and later by
the Pongrácz-Batthyány family. At that time, the entire area including the manor
house was changed significantly. The fortified system had categorically perished
and the manor house was to be given a representative make-over. The first
decades of the 20th century meant an improvement in residential comfort and
basic repairs. After 1945, the manor house was to change owners as well as
function. The division of the area brought with it the loss of its original,
natural, architectural and park environment. The current owner is trying to
reconstruct the area for new sociable and social purposes.
Lubor Suchý –
Karol Ďurian – Peter Krušinský
Historical trusses in
Turiec
Historical trusses, as part of immovable cultural monuments,
have not yet been systematically researched in Slovakia. Therefore the knowledge
on these constructions is insufficient. This results from the limited
information on their age, development, typology, construction system with many
noticeable details, as well as on the work of carpenters in the past. The
historical truss, as an essential part of a construction, warrants consistent
monumental research before a planned renovation, and the same should apply to
other parts of the construction. Of paramount importance is an exact survey and
documentation of all the constructions, including all artefacts and any details
found in the attic. The house-top with truss often provides the answer to many
questions on the architectural-historical development of the construction.
In 2008, the Regional Monuments Board Žilina – Martin Department, in
cooperation with the Civil Engineering Faculty of Žilina University – Department
of Building Engineering and Urban Planning, researched and documented truss
constructions of the historical sacral architecture in the Turiec region and
provisionally explored the trusses of the Orava region. Their findings published
in the book Historical Trusses of Sacral Constructions in Turiec, along with a
complete documentation, will serve to fulfil the needs of Slovakia’s Monuments
Board, as well as the regional monuments boards, and offer expert assistance in
renovation and preservation of the monument fund as a whole, including the
trusses within the mentioned region.
Kristína Zvedelová – Ivan
Gojdič
Changes to the moraine in Štrbské pleso
tarn
Settlements. Štrbské Pleso, the highest placed municipality of
the High Tatras, which surrounds the second largest mountain lake in the
southern part of the Tatras, has undergone four phases of urban-architectural
development since the last third of the 19th century: a formative phase – in the
last decades of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries; a less significant
one during the first Czechoslovak Republic; an intensive one during the
preparation for the world championships in classical disciplines (1970); and a
modernising one at the present time. Only a few constructions by the southern
moraine of the mountain lake have been preserved from the first developmental
phase. Nonetheless, their composition provided one of the High Tatras’ most
valuable historical architectural complexes.
The early development of the
municipality of Štrbské Pleso, situated at 1,355 metres above sea level,
coincided with the arrival of the yeoman family of Szentiványi from Liptovský
Ján. In 1872, Jozef Szentiványi built a game cabin there and three years later,
he permitted the Hungarian Carpathian Society to build a tourist hut, which he
supported both financially and materially. In his honour, it was entitled
Jozef’s lodging-house. Influenced by the development of tourism, Jozef
Szentiványi started to build the Štrbské Pleso Hotel (Csorba Tó száloda) in
1879, where he later added a café (1887) and restaurant (1892), as well as other
rooms. The Tourist House (Turistaház) was built near the hotel in 1881,
replacing the oldest game cabin. For himself, Szentiványi built a private
summerhouse in 1893, the so-called Jozef’s villa (Józseflak). It still exists
(by the name of Jánošík since 1919) and forms part of the large area of hotels
(Hviezdoslav, Kriváň, and late Končistá) that frame the southern bank of the
Štrbské Pleso lake.
In 1901 the municipality of Štrbské Pleso became the
property of the Hungarian Kingdom, which signed a lease contract with the
Belgian company Wagon Lits valid until 1908. During that time, the Belgian
company built a new Grandhotel at the site of the older tourist lodging-house
(the third Tatras’ Grandhotel in row; Starý Smokovec – 1904, Tatranská Lomnica –
1905), which was opened to the public in 1906.
Concurrent with the building
of the Grandhotel, also known as the New Hotel (Új száloda), a new tourist
lodging-house was being built at the site of Szentiványi’s first game cabin that
was named Gemer (Gömörlak). This act of merit, which appealed to the less
solvent, or contemporary “backpack” clientele of the High Tatras, has probably
been associated with the demolition of the older Tourist House from 1881 at the
place of the planned construction of the Grandhotel in 1904. The hotelier family
of Klimo rented the Grandhotel in 1908 and consequently built the most modern
building – the poly-functional facility of Končistá, which joined the western
façade of the Grandhotel’s accommodation block. Between 1914 and 1917 the
architects Guido Hoepfner and Géza Györgyi added a complex of catering and
cultural-social facilities to the Grandhotel and this area became the centre of
Štrbské Pleso.
Later construction changes to the hotel complex were to have a
devastating influence; consequently the decision to pull down a building was
preferred to its reconstruction. This resulted in the pulling down of the most
progressive construction in the area, which was linked to the building of the
last station of the electric railway from Starý Smokovec, which itself had been
running since 1912. By destroying the Končistá, the High Tatras was to lose
architecture that in this region had overcome time by more than two decades and
only the top functionalist buildings of the 1930s have outmatched it.
Zora Myslivcová
The phenomenon of the park square in
Zvolen
Zvolenské námestie (Zvolen Square) – this is the central
urban area of one of the oldest of Slovak towns and evolved from a marketplace
near a long-distance merchant road which led to Zvolen Castle. In the Middle
Ages, the square had taken shape alongside the road in a spindled fashion and
became the largest historical square in Slovakia.
The monument values of the
Square of the Slovak National Uprising in Zvolen are protected by the state in
two ways: as the Monument Zone of Zvolen outlined by the town’s fortification
and as a national cultural monument of the Church of St. Elisabeth with the
park. The monument preservation concentrates its attention on the complex
architectural-urban area, including the town’s historical public park.
When
a new structure – the promenade – appeared at Zvolen Square in the middle of the
19th century, this urban landmark was to go up a notch in quality, certainly
when compared with its previous effectiveness when used as a marketplace. The
walking area situated in the middle of the square between the two churches –
Roman-Catholic and Evangelic, was not created coincidentally. It originated at a
time when large cities were building their parks and demonstrated the awakening
of the Zvolen bourgeoisie after the revolution of 1848.
The first evidence
of a proposed park can be found on the cadastral map of 1860. In the grounds
separating the churches, twin lanes of trees have been lined up lengthways along
the north-south divide of the square and vertically by the Church of St.
Elisabeth. The oldest known photograph of Zvolen Square from the last quarter of
the 19th century pictures the eastern part of the square, where fenced alleys of
young trees frame the road leading towards the castle. The card dated from
January 14, 1902 shows tree-tops grown from the original two double-lanes with
secondary planting of the young trees in the middle. Also new is the alley
planted on the right side of the main draining gutter in the southern part of
the square. Another functional feature is the alley planted in front of the
houses on the eastern and western side of the square.
After alterations in
1907, during the installation of the bust of Francis II Rákóczi, the park became
oval in shape in its southern part and the front was directed towards the
castle. The park naturally evolved from a restricted alley shape and divided the
square into inner functional zones, namely that of marketplace and greenery,
which did not mutually interfere. The functional and aesthetical values of the
historic centre were to reach their zenith at the time.
The aerial
photograph of 1923 grabs your attention with the display of a vivid alley
directly linking the park. The ground plan of the park between the churches thus
takes on the shape of a trapezium, instead of the original rectangle. This was
the time when the modern town of Zvolen was to expand as the seat of the
Pohronie County during the first Czechoslovak Republic, which meant amongst
other things the abolition of the draining gutter at the square and the
implementation of canalisation, the paving of walks and the extension of the
western side of the old town park.
Newly planted lime-trees became the
ideological motif of the park with their symbolism of Slavic solidarity.
The photographs from 1945 – 1947 provide the key to an understanding of the
breaking changes in the development of Zvolen park, which is dominated by the
memorial built as a symbol of the town’s liberation. The big park behind is
divided and reduced by almost a half on the northern side. Almost all of the
hundred-years-old trees have been removed. From the entire wood samples, the
lime-trees planted in the 1920s are still growing.
Filip
Glocko
On the scent of tobacco
The exhibition On the
Scent of Tobacco, which took place at the Central-Slovak Museum in Banská
Bystrica in the second half of 2008, set out to show the full range of pipes and
smoking instruments, together with pictures of smoking motifs to be found on
decoration-utility articles, that were the property of the museum. The
publication Pipes and Smoking Instruments from the Collections of the Museum of
Central Slovakia accompanied the exhibition.
The exhibition offered the
visitor a full review of pipe-making development in Europe. Special attention
was dedicated to the history of pipe-making in the former Hungary and Slovakia.
The visitor could see more than 440 pipes made of various materials and coming
from different provenances and periods. Altogether, the Slovak-Central Museum’s
fund of history, fine art and ethnography comprises almost 600 articles. The
pipes from clay, the so-called “štiavničky” from Banská Štiavnica, which had
become popular all over the continent and even overseas, commanded particular
attention.
The clay pipes had been made in family workshops in Banská
Štiavnica since the 17th century. The oldest-known was the pipe workshop of
Benedikt and Benjamín Ahnert (from the beginning of the 19th century). The
second of significance was the workshop of the Hönig family in the first quarter
of the 19th century. Among other old workshops were those of Jozef and Ľudmila
Schmidt, Štefan Mihálik, Samuel Bisch, Franz Raugh, Samuel Pohl and Karl Kehrn.
The most famous was the workshop of Karol Zachar (1852 – 1925). Zachar’s pipes
date to the period between the end of the 18th century and first half of the
19th century. New types of pipes can be also ascribed to the designer Ján
Debnár, the workshop’s long-term worker. The pipes were first glazed and
enamelled in Vienna and Pest, later at a stove builder’s in Nová Baňa. Zachar’s
nephew Rudolf Môcik (1890 – 1969) took over the workshop in 1925, keeping the
original name. When the workshop closed in 1959, as the last pipe-making
business in Slovakia, it brought to an end one of the most successful crafts in
Banská Štiavnica.
Other pipe examples, made of wood, came from Germany,
(Ulm, Ruhla), Italy (Bolzano) and France (Saint-Claude). In addition, sea-foam
pipes made largely in Vienna, Germany (Lemgo, Ruhla), England and France, were
also to lead the way in the fashion of the 19th century.
Metal pipes had
similarly played a significant role in the history of smoking. Villagers in the
main preferred them because they were unbreakable and thus durable. Those
smokers from the higher echelons of society visited smiths to order silver,
richly decorated pipes, often inlaid with gems. The using of metal pipes had not
successfully spread itself much throughout Europe. Nevertheless, some Alpine
regions have been making them until today.
The exhibition also introduced
pipes made of untraditional materials – animal bones, amber, stone and glass
from various world countries. It also featured water pipes that originated in
the old India (not as an invention of Arabs and Turks), opium and porcelain
pipes. The oldest displayed articles were the pipe heads from the 17th century
from Dutch pipe workshops. A curiosity was one of the smallest functional
matches in the world.
Marián Bovan
The pipe of “Štúrovec”
Grossmann
Researching the identities and origins of the artefacts in
our museum collections is akin to setting out on a small adventure. This was the
case with the only porcelain pipe to have been found in the fund of the Museum
of Central Slovakia. The pipe, 97 mm long and 48 mm wide, was of no prima facie
significance. However, it did possess some merits: the dating was not missing,
and we knew who its first owner was, as well as the man he then gave it to.
In the second decade of the 19th century, the three Grossmann brothers –
Gustáv, Ľudovít and Ladislav – had been born in the mining town of Pukanec. They
each had become influential, though lesser known national-cultural activists and
supporters of the nationalist movement. The oldest of these, Gustáv Dobroslav
(*1813), had worked closely with Ľudovít Štúr, the leader of the Slovak national
revival. After his studies at Bratislava lyceum, Gustáv went on to study
theology at Halle University in 1839 – 1840. At the end of his stay there, he
dedicated the porcelain pipe to his younger brother, Ľudovít Bohdan, who came to
study in Germany two years later and after Gustáv’s premature death in 1846
continued with his work in the national movement. Between 1847 and 1888, Ľudovít
worked as a pedagogue at the Evangelical gymnasium in Banská Bystrica, where he
was to later die in 1890. This explains the fact of the porcelain pipe’s having
found itself among the collections of the former town’s, and today’s
Central-Slovak Museum.
Zuzana Francová
Relics of F. F. Rómer
in the Bratislava City Museum
This article discusses the relics of
the archaeological pioneer of what was then Hungary, the Pressburg native Franz
Floridus Rómer (1815 – 1889), which have been preserved in the collections of
the Bratislava City Museum. Rómer had initiated the foundation of this museum
and bequeathed to it many of his belongings. From the period when he worked as a
director of the Catholic gymnasium in Pest, there came a silver candlestick with
inkpot and penholder, which he received from his students in 1866. A memento of
Rómer’s father – a shoemaker of Viennese origin, Franz Ramer, is a wooden box
(sugar-box) with a shoemaking image and humorous German text. A very interesting
historical document is the cardboard cassette for embroidery with a detailed
model of Josefstadt’s prison cell inside. Rómer had made it himself during his
imprisonment in this Eastern-Czech fortress in 1850 – 1854. On the outside, the
cassette lists the names of 107 Hungarian nationalists – participants of the
revolution in 1848 – 1849, who were imprisoned in Olomouc and Josefstadt. They
included several famous personalities, such as Count Ferdinand Zichy (1783 –
1862), General Josef Dobay (1820 – 1898), Evangelical Priest, Officer and
Professor from Nagyvárad (today’s Oradea Mare in Romania) Lajos Hajdu (1813 –
1901), Lieutenants Károly Kiss (1796 – 1866), Elek Forró (1813 – 1893) and Lajos
Zambelly (1815 – 1901).
Zlata Troligová
The Art Nouveau
trifles of Hana Gregorová
One of the exhibition cases in the State
Scientific Library – Museum of Literature and Music in Banská Bystrica is
dedicated to Slovak writer, edification worker and advocator of women’s
emancipation rights Hana Gregorová (1885 – 1958), the wife of the celebrated
writer Jozef Gregor Tajovský. Apart from the precious private correspondence
between the couple, which accounts for well over a thousand pieces in the
museum’s collections (and still growing), the museum also owns several of her
photographs and personal belongings, among others a rare coffee and tea set and
an Art Nouveau powder box, probably a remnant of the sojourn in Paris in 1926.
Zuzana Gažíková – Peter Vítek
The Liptov aristocracy in
portraits
The exhibition entitled The Liptov Aristocracy in
Portraits, which took place in the Liptov gallery of P. M. Bohúň in Liptovský
Mikuláš in February and March of 2009, has been unique in Slovakia in its
presentation of older art until the beginning of the 20th century. The book on
Aristocratic Country Seats in Liptov County, written by young historian Tomáš
Janura and published by the gallery, preceded the exhibition. The author also
helped to select the works for the exhibition. More than twenty portraits of
Liptov noblemen came in the main from the collections of Slovak museums and
galleries, but also from one church and one private collection. The portraits of
the Liptov noblemen, mainly the lower aristocracy, enjoying a rural way of life,
are not among the most valuable from an art-historical aspect; therefore
painters were not assigned to the exhibited works. Probably they were artists of
little, often only local significance, which with some exceptions is manifested
in the quality of their works. The exhibition was important from a local-
historical viewpoint and its aim was to remind the visitors of the interesting
and rich history of the Liptov region and its inhabitants.
Eva
Nelišerová – Anna Ďurišová – Igor Broska
The planet we live on
In November 2008, the SNM – Natural Science Museum in Bratislava
opened a thematically extensive exhibition dedicated to the planet Earth. The
exhibition is an activity within the International Year of Planet Earth, which
is a global initiation into the promotion of geosciences designed for their
impact on society and man’s existence on Earth.
The SNM exhibition is
divided into thematic topics. The Geology of Slovakia presents the morphology
and geological development of the Slovak territory, which also relates to the
use of mineral resources. Their importance is discussed within the section What
Does Earth Give Us? An almost three metre long cross-section model of our
planet, which illustrates the earth’s basic inner spheres along with processes
that happen inside the earth’s body, whilst simultaneously influencing events on
the surface, dominates this part of the exhibition. The exhibition also
introduces us to the hydrosphere (water on Earth) and the atmosphere of Earth.
The atmosphere absorbs most of the ultraviolet sun radiation, regulates the
temperature fluctuations between day and night and thus offers protection to
life on Earth. A big emphasis is also put on soil – the Earth’s living skin,
which together with air and water, forms the basic natural environmental
ingredient vital for life on Earth.
The part entitled Earth –the Living
Planet, talks about the 3.5 billion years of life on Earth from the origin of
the first microscopic organisms up to the moment when man gained control over
the planet. The exhibition offers information relating to the various forms of
fossils; it is a small gallery of the most characteristic animal and plant
representatives of past geological periods with breaks at significant
developmental changes.
A specific part of the exhibition is dedicated to the
geological development of Slovakia and its raw materials. Geoscientific
knowledge and research is fundamental for today’s scientifically minded society,
e.g. in the quest for, and protection of, sources of drinking water and the
building of technical works and line constructions, such as highways, railways
and gas pipelines. The original exhibits of rocks, minerals, fossils and various
models help the visitors to better apprehend even the most complicated
information.
The exhibition originated as an initiative of the National
Geological Committee of the Slovak Republic thanks to the mutual efforts of the
Geological and Geophysical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the
Slovak National Museum – Natural Science Museum and the Faculty of Natural
Sciences of the Comenius University and State Geological Institute of Dionýz
Štúr. It is open until June 30, 2009.
Nora Hebertová – Katarína
Chmelinová
F. A. Maulbertsch and the main altar of the Kremnica
Franciscans
The main altar of the monastery church of the Kremnica
Franciscans forms a large and dominating part of the church. Particular
literature had long dated it to around 1777, basing its findings on the time of
the monastery’s fire. A more detailed archival research however has recently
proved that it comes from 1796 – 1797. This was the time of the large renovation
of the burnt church and began after the death of Emperor Joseph II in 1790 and
the subsequent relaxation of his restrictive measurements.
The main altar,
consecrated to St. Francis of Assisi, is of a late-baroque style. The central
part reveals a large canvas, painted by the genius of the late Central-European
baroque period, Franz Anton Maulbertsch. It pictures the scene of St. Francis’
stigmatisation, with sculptures of St. Catherine and St. Barbara at the sides.
The image is completed by the presence of God the Father at the pinnacle. This
extraordinary shrine, which had for a long time been overlooked by special
literature, was in a state of disrepair until last year. With the instigation of
the Roman-Catholic Church and the Kremnica parish church, as well as partial
financial support from the Culture Ministry of the Slovak Republic, the shrine’s
restoration started in 2008. The first phase preoccupied itself in the main with
its dismantlement. Additional artistic-historical research followed, which
brought about reinforcement of the architecture, as well as the cleaning and
removing of repaints. Thanks to the archival sources, we know that the works on
the altar construction lasted from July 2 to October 2 in 1796. But we do not
know who designed the altar work. This type of altar construction, though, is
one of the most common in the 18th century.
The centre piece of the altar is
the afore- mentioned painting, the Stigmatisation of St. Francis (380 x 187cm).
Several years ago, the painting was convincingly defined as one of the last
works of F. A. Maulbertsch († 7. 8. 1796) and his workshop. This significant
Central-European painter had probably received an order from the Kremnica
Franciscans to paint the scene via the Franciscan monastery in Gyöngyös, for
which he worked in the 1780s. He sent the painting from Vienna. It was then put
into a simple frame and the final painter’s touch was apparently given by the
Kremnica painter Štefan Wölcsey, who also assisted with the church’s other altar
paintings.
The ongoing research of this huge painting is not yet complete
as an additional layer applied in the first half of the 19th century covers
three quarters of the original painting in the canvas’ upper part. Only the
lower quarter of the painting has remained untouched, where the signature of F.
Ant. Maulpertsc has been discovered along with the dating underneath Pint:
795.
Marian A. Mayer – Barbora Matáková
The organ
in Zemianske Kostoľany
Zemianske Kostoľany is an ancient
municipality of the Upper Nitra region (on the border of western and central
Slovakia) and its first written documentation dates from 1331. In the 15th
century, the noble family of Kosztolányi were to form an integral part of its
history, developing rich construction activities there and leaving traces on a
municipally sacred life.
While several localities of the region had either
preserved their catholic religion or come to be recatholicized, the Kosztolányis
had kept their Lutheran faith even in the critical period of the second half of
the 17th century. They finally managed to build an evangelical church in 1734 –
1736 and it was to take even more decades to gradually furnish it. By the end of
the 18th century, the interior was fully furnished with movables with enlarged
altar architecture, into which an early-baroque retabulum was imbedded. All
interior elements were created in the spirit of older copies, with plastic
features of late-baroque ornamentation. It has remained a mystery, whether the
wooden emporia was built concurrently with the church construction or was added
later. As far as the current dating of the instrument goes, to the end of the
18th or beginning of the 19th century, the organ was placed on the emporia after
the large interior furnishing. Based on the outer signs of the organ cabinet,
the organ was created independently on a late-baroque apparatus. It is also
possible that it was built for another church and was transported to Zemianske
Kostoľany from the nearby locality of Turiec, Pohronie or Liptov.
The
five-register positive organ comes from the end of the 18th or beginning of the
19th century. The whole instrument is assembled from individual parts that fit
into each other and can be dismantled, as is common with all old positive organs
built by Slovak organ makers.
The state of the instrument had been causing
concern for several decades until 2004, when the evangelic church choir of the
Augsburg confession managed to obtain financial means for the general
reconstruction of the instrument as well as its cabinet. The aim of the
restoration was to return the instrument to its original state in the most
careful way and has undoubtedly helped to save it. Two concerts have already
been played on the restored instrument – one took place on the occasion of the
renovated instrument’s blessing and the other one was part of the 17th annual
international festival of Slovak Historical Organs.
Zuzana
Trepková-Paternostro
Consalvo Carelli: The Church of St. Francis in
Cava
Art historian Zuzana Trepková-Paternostro was born in Budapest
and studied History of Art at the Philosophical Faculty of Comenius University
in Bratislava (doctorate in 1977). She worked for the Slovak National Gallery
(1967 – 1971) and since 1972 has lived in Brazil, where she works as a curator
at the foreign arts department of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Rio de
Janeiro. She has written publications and organised exhibitions on Brazilian and
European art, and worked with special associations of American and European
cultural institutions. In 2008, she dedicated the painting Church of St. Francis
in Cava by Consalvo Carelli to Bratislava City Gallery, which has enriched its
collections of the 19th century.
Consalvo (Gonsalve) Carelli is one of the
remarkable painters of Italian landscape painting of the 19th century and at the
same time a significant representative of the artistic school in Posillipo near
Naples (La Scuola di Posillipo, Napoli), which has led artists to create in free
nature rather than in the studio. The school’s preferred themes were sea
sceneries and the surrounding countryside.
Dutchman Anton Sminck, also known
as Antonio van Pitloo (1790 – 1837), played a crucial role in the school’s
existence. Settled in Italy, he was considered to be its founder, along with
Belgian Frans Vervloet (1795 – 1872) and local painter Giacinto Gigante (1806 –
1876).
Consalvo Carelli was born in Naples in 1818. Besides his artistic
activity, he also taught painting to Princess Margaret of Savoy and in 1848 he
actively joined the Garibaldi movement for unifying Italy. He was highly
acclaimed yet during his life he painted the commissions of aristocratic
families in Italy and France, not to mention Russian tsars. His works can be
found in the most significant public and private collections around Naples as
well as in other European towns.
The painting of the Church of St. Francis
in Cava was purchased in an antique shop in Rio de Janeiro in 1996. That same
year it was introduced to the public at the exhibition entitled Italian
Landscape Painting of the 19th Century and the School in Posillipo. Being the
first painting of C. Carelli in the public collections of Slovakia, the Slovak
public can now get better acquainted with the Italian landscape painting of the
19th century, the pilgrimage of European artistic works from Europe to Southern
America, as well as the collection activity in Brazil.
The
Edition of National Cultural Monuments in Slovakia
Interview with
the project’s sponsor Ľubica Szerdová-Veľasová
The Monuments Board of the
Slovak Republic, in cooperation with the Slovart Publishing House, Ltd.,
prepared the first title of the New Edition of National Cultural Monuments in
Slovakia, in 2008. After a break of 40 years, the Edition follows today’s
legendary Register of Monuments in Slovakia I – III published by the Slovak
Institute of Monuments Preservation and Natural Protection in the Obzor
Publishing House in 1967 – 1969.
The Edition aims to introduce the public to
the movable and immovable cultural monuments listed in the Central Register of
the Monuments Fund, as it is currently defined by Act No. 49/2002 Coll. on the
Protection of the Monuments Fund. The book presentation of this large project’s
results fulfils the ambitions of today’s generation of conservationists, which
is to present their opinion on the monuments fund of Slovakia at the beginning
of the 3rd millennium. Its results have been collected from the ground and basic
scientific research and documentation work by the workers of the Monuments Board
and the regional monuments boards.
The Edition’s individual volumes are
divided into the regions of the current territorial-administration partition of
the Slovak Republic valid since 1996. The establishments with a large number of
monuments will be published in separate volumes. The Edition’s goal has been
spread over a longer period and the publishing of individual volumes follows the
gradual revision of the Central Register of the Monuments Fund.
The Edition
has been launched by the publication National Cultural Monuments in Slovakia –
the Ružomberok Region, which introduces the monuments of the lower Liptov
region.