Revue Pamiatky a múzeá – Summary 2/2012

Jana Oršulová
Coats of arms on church sectroids in Svätý Jur, Pezinok and Častá
Coats of arms, dates and other artistic decorations, situated in the crossings of gothic vaults in churches, were only barely recognizable with the naked eye. Maybe that is why their descriptions are often missing from the otherwise detailed documentation of churches. Today, the technology helps us to analyse better and identify these relics. This also concerns a few sacral buildings near Bratislava – Church of St. George in Svätý Jur, Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Pezinok and Church of St. Imrich in Častá – the origins of which (as well as additions and renovations) are connected to the significant Hungarian family of Counts of Svätý Jur and Pezinok. The selection of these three localities provides an exceptionally interesting sample of almost twenty, family coats of arms from the second half of the 15th century. This helps us to see the way the family coat of arms of the Counts of Svätý Jur and Pezinok and their wives had been depicted in rare building monuments only several decades before the last male descendant of the family died. It is hard to believe that no historians have yet identified the coats of arms of the counts’ wives. Especially when all three churches preserve the coats of arms of one benefactor, Juraj/George III (1410 – 1467) and his first wife Uršula Wolfurt (recorded in 1435). They clearly document intensive donation activities as well as help to estimate the origin of the sacral object. The author presents results of an almost detective investigation in the family genealogy and based on the latest research, identifies the coats of arms preserved on the church sectroids. They belong to husbands, or their wives, who came from significant families of today’s Slovak and Hungarian territories, as well as Austria and the Czech Republic. The wives of the counts came from the families of Héderváry, Wolfurt, Montfort, von Troppau (Přemysls of Opava), Rozgony, Waldstein (Valdštejn) and Balassa.
If the conclusions of the heraldic decoration research on the sectroids of the churches in the three selected locations, which belonged to the estate of the Counts of Svätý Jur and Pezinok, are correct, then only one of the thirteen coats of arms documented by four generations has remained unidentified. The research and monument renovation of other sacral constructions in the property of the Counts of Svätý Jur and Pezinok will certainly bring more interesting results. These precious monuments preserved in situ will thus be recognized and used as a historical source that can aid their dating.

Peter Buday
Liber mortuorum of Nitra’s Franciscans
One hundred years have passed since the publication of the basic work about the history of the Franciscan convention in Nitra. Author, Canon Gabriel Czeizel dedicated a separate chapter in it to the crypts under the monastic Church of St. Peter and Paul. As a basis he used a document of an exceptionally cultural-historical value, the book of dead Liber Mortuorum in Crypta Ecclae Nostrae ab Anno 1737, Inclusive Sepultorum, which had been kept since 1737. Preserved until today, it is a precious source that enables the study of the period society.
The early-baroque Church of Franciscans was built in 1634 and shortly after that, burials began to take place there. The oldest crypts were situated under the church’s nave and sanctuary. More space for burying was added in 1664 – 1665, after the nave was enlarged with four western chapels. The death of 11 monks and the consequences of typhoid fever (1772) called for a solution to the unmaintainable condition of the crypts. Those, which after the cleaning in 1778, could not be aerated to the exterior were walled in. Others received airshafts into the southern wall that were accessible from the church garden. These changes also meant adjustments to burial ceremonies and a fixation of new fees for burials. The constructional development of the church, including the crypts, was closed with the renovation in 1798. The monastic temple had become a sought-after place for burying the deceased ones of all societal ranks, as the Liber morturoum describes.
The title of the book is not exact. The records of the burials only fill the first fifty-eight pages. The content of the last third of the book, on the contrary, is very diversified. Overall five hundred and ninety eight recordings took place between 1737 and 1904. There are lists of novices and verts, as well as the names of priests buried in the church after 1799. Records of some years are missing, which speaks of the ban on church burials during epidemics. The largest numbers of burials are registered after the middle of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. After 1877, it was reduced to only one burial a year. During the course of the 18th century, we register a high ratio of craftsmen of various trades. This situation gradually changed after 1800, in favour of the clerical, municipal and regional notables and intelligentsia, recording quite a lot of doctors and pharmacists among the deceased ones. Priest A. Pelcsánszky was the last one to be buried in the crypts (1904).

Miroslav Števík
Distillery under the Ľubovňa Castle
The Ľubovňa Castle (Stará Ľubovňa) after 1412 became the residence of the administrators of the Spiš region’s part, which Sigismund of Luxembourg backed up for Polish King Vladislaus II Jagiellon. From the end of the 16th century (1591) until the middle of the 18th century (1745), the members of the Polish noble family of Lubomirski held the position of Spiš reeves.
The construction of the first distillery under the Ľubovňa Castle dates to the period, when the Lubomirski family owned the castle (before 1745). According to the detailed description of the castle estate from 1746, the distillery belonged to it. Some parts of the construction or inner equipment are described as obsolete, which means that the distillery had stood there for a long time. It was a wooden construction with two old wooden doors. Behind the second door were old stills. The distillery also contained one good still and four copper pots, which needed repairing. A canal, described as in a bad condition, had three pairs of copper pipes running through. Eight wooden casks for mash were there as well. One window was very damaged as was the floor. Behind the distillery were cattle-sheds.
The wife of the Polish King Augustus III the Saxon, Maria Josepha, became the owner of the castle in 1745. She decided to put the castle as well as the area underneath in order. Even though no detailed records have been preserved, it is very likely that the construction project of the late-baroque area under the castle was the work of Francesco Placidi, the architect of the Polish king and a native of Rome. The identical building elements in the project of the castle renovation and the construction of the late-baroque complex in the area under the castle testify to this. The result of the constructional activities is illustrated in the documents from 1773. The area under the castle was made up of two parts – the eastern one, which included a brewery and flats of the estate administrator and treasurer (the first two buildings exist until today), and the western one, dominated by the masonry distillery with the flat of a guardian (both have been preserved until today, as well as a vaulted cellar). The distillery under the Ľubovňa Castle is probably the oldest preserved construction of this kind in Slovak territory.

Juraj Babják
Cenotaphs commemorating the dead in World War I
Despite the fact that the cenotaphs honouring the dead in the First World War are not the only (war) monuments in Slovakia, they are often easily identified thanks to their specific features, such as shape and iconography. The most important identification sign on these cenotaphs is the dating 1914 – 1918. Other features differ, as they depend on the size of the municipality, locality, surroundings, designer, construction, etc. Based on their features, we can divide cenotaphs into several groups. Most commonly, the cenotaphs commemorating those killed in the First World War were accompanied with a sculpture, which was financially demanding, as not only the work of the stone-mason, but also of the sculptor had to be paid. The inhabitants of the municipality paid the expenses through public collections. The most frequent themes of the monument sculpture included sacral motifs, allegories and sculptures of killed, dying, lying or kneeling soldiers (Plavecký Štvrtok, Koválov, Jablonové, Častá, Cífer, Dolné Orešany, Kátlovce and Kolárovo). Another motif was the Slovak family, often a woman – mother, man – soldier and child, or children (Láb, Viničné, Šúrovce). The allegoric sculptures also included images of animals, mostly lions and lionesses. The lions (Giraltovce, Zemianska Olča) were interpreted as a Czechoslovak symbol; the lionesses were the guardians of the dead. Large number of monuments had a freestanding sculpture of a soldier (Most pri Bratislave, Hliník nad Hronom, Bratislava-Vrakuňa, Stará Turá, Šaštín-Stráže). Another type of sculptural monument was the memorial dedicated to the Slovak past and the historical personalities (Brezová pod Bradlom), as well as the monument with people in national traditional costume (Gbely, Topoľčianky). Frequently, they also used relief sculpture in monument work (Trebatice), composition of statues (Sereď, Podkonice, Gabčíkovo, Vrbové, Chtelnica, Trstín, Bratislava-Rača, Šulekovo) and the so-called monument column or symbol (Lemešany, Želiezovce, Michal nad Žitavou, Spišské Bystré, Bratislava-Devín).

Pavol Makyna
Construction of the Youth Dam (Priehrada mládeže)
The building of the Nosice waterworks at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s significantly affected the central Považie region (along the river Váh) between the towns of Púchov and Považská Bystrica. The Youth Dam, as people still call it today, or better, its hydroelectric power station, was the main reason behind its construction. It had become the source of electric energy and further industrialisation in the region in the post-war years. The construction of the dam near Púchov in 1949 – 1958 brought along the “communist” organisation of work as well as a systematic training of skilled and political cadres from amongst the young. Today it is a technical monument.
After the Second World War, the industrialisation of the agrarian Slovakia was the only option for renovating and increasing the living standard of the inhabitants. First of all, it was necessary to assure an abundance of electrical energy, which was to be achieved by building several dams on the river Váh, the so-called Váh cascades. The Slovak electric power station began to plan the Youth Dam in Nosice in 1947 with an estimated completion in 1954. Regarding the size of the construction, as well as technical, organisational and natural complications that occurred during the building, the work was completed in 1958. The most complicated were the geological and hydro-technical works, which included the transfer of the railway line in the section from Púchov to Považská Bystrica and a discovery of a rich mineral healing spring that is now part of the Nimnica spa.
Mostly young people – volunteers, who worked on the dam construction, were sent there in stages by the Central Union of Youth in Bratislava, which rendered the waterworks its name in 1949. The author describes the organisation of work for the youth, their daily regime, accommodating and catering conditions in six camps, free-time activities that were used for political campaign, as well as cultural happenings (an amphitheatre with a stage was available) and sports activities at the stadium, built during the dam construction. The football team Tatran Youth Dam even played in the regular league competition.
The building of the dam also meant expropriation of land, relocation of inhabitants of the surrounding municipalities of Okrut, Milochov and Podvažie, and subsequent submerging of the area with water. The filling of the Youth Dam basin started on December 1, 1956 and the maximum water level was reached on May 4, 1958. The whole infrastructure of the hydroelectric power station was completed in 1962.

Dagmar Poláčková
120 years of Lednické Rovne glassworks
The production of utility glass in the Lednické Rovne glassworks (today RONA, Corp.) dates from 1892. On the occasion of the 120 anniversary of the glassworks’ foundation, we review its production, based on the study material provided by the collections of several Slovak galleries and museums, as well as the glassworks archives and Slovak Glass Museum set at the location. The glassworks, one of a few in Slovakia, founded its work on a cooperation with designers such as Karol Hološko, Jaroslav Taraba, Ladislav Pagáč, Jozef Kolembus, Juraj Steinhübel, Peter Šipoš, Patrik Illo and Mária Berkyová-Račeková. Many significant Czech glassmakers also worked in Lednické Rovne, including Dagmar Kudrová, Julie Pivcová, Jindřich Rejnart, Miloš Matoušek, Vladimír Žahour and Vladimír Jelínek.
From its very beginning, the collections of the glassworks’ production regularly appeared in exhibitions at home as well as abroad – either in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1908 under the joint title Hungarian Exhibition (since Slovakia was still part of Austria-Hungary), or directly under the Lednické Rovne glassworks brand in the first interwar exhibition of applied art and industrial design, at a newly built Umelecká beseda (Arts Guild) in Bratislava in 1927. The beverage set of Karol Hološko first appeared in an all-Slovak exhibition of applied art and industrial design in 1958. Hološko also took part in a representative exhibition of the Czechoslovak glass in New York’s Corning Museum of Glass in 1959, where he received a certificate of merit and part of his set entered the collections of this prestigious museum. The Slovak National Gallery had also held several remarkable presentations of the Lednické Rovne glass from 1961, when the Department of Applied Art and Industrial Design was established.
The gallery’s collection of applied art and design contains a large assemblage of historical glass from the Lednické Rovne production, mainly the sets of works by K. Hološko, D. Kudrová, J. Taraba, P. Illo, L. Pagáč, J. Steinhübel and J. Kolembus. The Slovak Glass Museum in Lednické Rovne, which was opened in 1988, also owns a significant collection that documents the development of glass production. Individual glass products can also be found in the depositories of the Central-Slovak Museum in Banská Bystrica, Slovak National Museum (SNM) in Bratislava, SNM in Martin and Industrial Art Museum in Prague.
Authentic documents about the history of glassmaking are kept in the archives of the RONA company. A set of sample books from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, which is the property of the glassworks, represents a unique collection also in the European context. The books were used as showcards or offering catalogues for glass production not only in Lednické Rovne but also in other glassworks that were owned by the J. Schreiber und Neffen company back then (apart from the German Fürstenberg glassworks, it included the Czech and Moravian glassworks in Velké Losiny, Rapotín, Jaronovice, Dubňany, Lužice and Josefův Důl).

Mária Zajíčková
Guild altar of the Skalica boot makers
Guilds, originally brotherhoods associated around an altar of a certain saint – patron, originated in Europe in the 12th century. These professional organisations followed guild’s regulations and amended rules in the economical, social and educational fields. Also important was their charity activity and involvement in town’s religious life. They used their finances and gifts to participate in building sacral constructions and mainly guild altars inside them. An integrated collection of baroque guild altars can be seen in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Skalica. Out of the 16 Skalica guilds registered in the 1730s, ten of them had altars. The boot makers had the altar of St. Stephen the King. The dating of the individual altars’ origins is often debatable.
The guild of the Skalica boot makers is documented in articles from 1659. The first one formulates the decision to built the guild’s own altar. Among the preserved items are the guild’s accounts from 1728 to 1730, a vocational certificate of a boot-maker’s apprentice with the vista of the Skalica town from January 6, 1822, and chiefly the Book of the Guild of Skalica Boot Makers founded in 1660. It is a unique document, which also concerns the construction, equipment, repairs and maintenance, as well as the method of financing the guild’s altar of St. Stephen the King. The book records the building of the altar in 1701, and a statement of its costs and the making of the guild’s flag, below which the guild participated in religious ceremonies and processions. It also records the purchasing of the portable altar stone in 1731, which conditioned its sanctification. It also keeps records of later minor repairs of the altar and flag, as well as gradual replenishment of altar necessities. The altar was fundamentally reconstructed in the middle of the 19th century. For this purpose, the guild formed a foundation for the flag in 1836 and for the altar in 1854. It was compulsory for the guild members to contribute there. Other contributors included people interested in a master place in the guild and voluntary donors.
When analysing the archival sources of the Skalica branch in the State Archives of Bratislava and documents in the fund of the Záhorie Museum, it was revealed that Skalica master joiner Jozef Serrer built the altar in 1701 and Matúš Bílowský painted and gilded it in 1703.

Jozef Medvecký
Altar picture of St. Stephen the King in Skalica
Following the article of Mária Zajíčková, Jozef Medvecký adds several observations about the altar of St. Stephen, mainly its central painting. From the statement of the joiner’s, painter’s and guilder’s costs in the Book of the Guild of Skalica Boot Makers, it is not clear whether Matúš Bílowský, pictor Zakolczensis, also painted the altar pictures in 1703 or just treated the altar with polychrome and gold. The work on the altar of the Boot Makers Guild was one of the painter’s last orders. Before, his name was only mentioned with the reparation of the parish church in 1701. Despite the fact that he was probably the only painter active in the town at the end of the 17th century, no other works of his are known.
The subject of the altar’s central painting is St. Stephen, who gives his crown, and thus the kingdom to the protection of the Virgin Mary, the patroness of the Hungarian kingdom. The motif was first painted by the Viennese painter Tobias Pock on the altar of one of the side chapels of the Marian basilica in Mariazell in 1665. This specifically “Hungarian” historic-hagiographic motif had spread in the 18th century and became really popular at the end of the baroque era. Its early depictions include the monumental frescos by G. A. Galliarti from 1720 on the presbytery vault of the St. Emeramus Cathedral in Nitra, as well as the fresco by A. Galli Bibiena from 1726, that vanished from the vault of the Veszprém cathedral.
The central painting of the guild’s altar in Skalica portrays the scene in a basic version, with the focus on the main figures with no additions. The composition of the painting is not the painter’s own invention but probably a copy of a graphic artwork. We do not know the specific prototype yet, but the painter of the main altar’s picture in the Jablonica parish church copied the same artwork sometime before 1752. Other true replicas of the whole composition, also include the picture in the extension of the side altar in the cemetery Church of St. John the Baptist in Modra (with sides reversed), and the quality work of Trnava painter Karol Wilhelm Brandt from 1755 on the main altar of the Beckov parish church. Similarly, an interesting alternative, evidently based on the artwork, is the flag painted on both sides by Trenčín painter Franz Wenke for a boot makers’ guild of an unknown provenance at the beginning of the 19th century. If the altar painting in Skalica came from the beginning of the 18th century, it would have been the oldest copy of the artwork discovered so far, as based on the evidence, the image spread in the middle of the 18th century. It is therefore possible that the current central picture on the altar of the Skalica boot maker’s guild is not the original one. It could have been exchanged for a new one (as M. Zajíčková assumes), when in 1757 the altar was dismantled and transferred from the presbytery to its current place at the southern wall in the side nave of the church.

Jozef Lenhart
Renovation of Tomášov manor house
The fates of Slovakia’s aristocratic residences were very dramatic after the Second World War. Based on the presidential decree No 108/1945, they became the property of the Czechoslovak Republic. The decree’s consequences were catastrophic for many buildings. The manor house in Tomášov came under the administration of the Social Care Authority, which decided to change it into a state re-education institute for unadaptable young people. Though it helped its preservation, it also decimated the manor house’s monument values. During restitutions, the manor house was given back to its original owner in 1993, who continued to rent it to the Education Ministry for the additional 15 years for the same purpose. A new owner, who acquired the manor house in 2007, decided to renovate it and rebuild it into a hotel and congress facility of a high standard.
An architectural-historical and artistic-historical research took place prior to the project phase of the manor house renovation in 2007. There was very little information about the building even in the specialized older Hungarian literature. When the research took place, the manor house was in a very bad condition. Its interior was devalued by utilitarian redevelopments, original period-style elements and decoration decimated to a minimum, masonry weakened with dampness, exterior coatings devastated, and windows, doors and roofing were found to be inadequate. Moreover, new buildings of the corrective-educational institute were attached to the house, which was also overgrown by vegetation from an unkept historical park.
The manor house was built around 1767 – 1769 at the edge of Tomášov municipality (originally Fél), in the area called Majorház (Mayorhász, Mojorháza pusta), which was situated on a mound, with the Little Danube river running around it. The building with three side wings was influenced by Viennese baroque and local patterns. The northern façade of the main building represents the classicistic version of the suburban residence of Anton Grassalkovich (today’s Presidential Palace) in Bratislava. Ján Jesenák was the founder of the Tomášov manor house; other owners included the families of Draškóci, Vay and Strasser. During its two hundred and fifty-year existence, it underwent six constructional phases, but up to this day preserved its baroque look and layout. The last, seventh phase took place during the renovation from 2008 to 2011, and despite a new mission, it respected the primary artistic and architectural values of the manor house and its genius loci. The graphic cabinet and baroque wall paintings were reconstructed with extreme attention, following the detailed description of decoration and equipment of the manor house and its park in the travel book of Gottfried Rotenstein from 1784.

Renáta Babicová – Ivan Kopáčik
Facsimile of Detva privilege from 1811
On the occasion of the bicentenary anniversary, when monarch Francis I Habsburg granted market privileges to the town of Detva, the local Podpoľanie Museum exhibited a facsimile of a document from 1811, the original of which is permanently preserved in the funds of the State Archives in Banská Bystrica, the Zvolen branch. At the opening of the exhibition Detva in Sources in 1999, the authentic document was loaned to the museum for a short time, but soon was replaced with a photocopy, that remained part of the exhibition until its dismantling in 2010. The workers of the Podpoľanie Museum had long ago considered its replacement with a higher quality work and thus at the jubilee anniversary of granting the Detva privileges in 2011 they decided to have its facsimile produced.
Restoration student Ivan Kopáčik from Detva made the facsimile. During the ceremonious presentation of the document’s facsimile on December 13, 2011, the visitors could see, not only the final result, a precise work with a stamp attached in a wooden case, but also the extremely difficult production process through the author’s presentation – the hours of work from studying the document in the archives, through treating and preparing the leather for parchment, to the patient transcribing of the difficult Latin text by hand on the parchment. The authors of the article closely describe the process of the facsimile production from studying the original parchment document with a size of 72cm by 46cm, material for its production, ink used in writing, as well as details of the red wax stamp attached to the document on a silk sling and enclosed in a protective case made of walnut wood. The production process of the facsimile had used technologies, materials and tools as identical to the original ones as possible, including its own production of the parchment, natural ink of the same colouring as the original and other parts of the document, such as the textile slings, the case for the stamp and the stamp itself. The facsimile was then adjusted in a showcase, on a mat, at an angle of 45°.

Zuzana Juríčková
Augustus of Prima Porta
The past of a part of our territory that used to belong to the Roman Empire, can be traced in archaeological, architectural as well as artistic relics. The reign of Emperor Augustus, also known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavius (63 BC – 14 AD), represented the golden times for Roman art. More than eighty sculptures were dedicated to Augustus, just within Rome. The most famous of them, which was used as a prototype for later portraits of Roman emperors, was the Augustus of Prima Porta. The original statue, from the end of the 1st century BC is made of marble, has a larger-than-life size of 203 cm and is kept in the Vatican Museums, in the Braccio Nuovo collections. It was discovered in 1863, in the Villa of Augustus’ wife Livia Drusilla at Prima Porta, in today’s suburb of Rome. An unknown sculptor took inspiration in the Doryphoros by Polykleitos and depicted the Roman emperor as a captain talking to his soldiers. The statue had a clear mission to portray the exceptionality of Augustus and his godliness. His chest armour shows scenes from battles on the territories that he had conquered.
A bronze copy of the Augustus’ statue from the 19th century, signed by F. BARBEDIENNE. FONDEUR. can also be found in Slovakia. The signature reveals the name of metal founder Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810 – 1892, Paris). Count John Pálffy (1829 – 1908) brought the statue to our territory. Originally, it used to adorn the park of the manor house in Kráľová pri Senci, one of the count’s six residences in Slovak territory. Since he had no descendants, he asked his heirs, in his last will from 1907 to turn his palaces in Vienna and Budapest, and also the Bojnice castle and Kráľová pri Senci manor house into museums. Unfortunately, because of the disputes among his heirs, war and new state establishment, many artefacts were sold in auctions or stolen, after his death in 1924 – 1926. Based on the Vienna arbitrage on November 2, 1938, Slovakia lost the territory where the baroque manor house in Kráľová pri Senci was situated, and which eventually got completely destroyed in the Second World War. Prior to that, part of the sculptures from the French park, including the bronze statue of Augustus of Prima Porta, was transferred to the manor house in Suchá nad Parnou. From there, they were taken to the Spa Island in Piešťany in 1942. The statue was stolen in 1946 and sometime after 1948 brought back to the Slovak National Museum in Bratislava as a sculpture of an unknown origin. In the 1950s, it used to stand next to the main staircase in the museum’s building at Vajanského nábrežie. Later, it was moved to the antique exposition and then to the depository in the so-called winter garden, from where it was taken to the SNM-Archaeological Museum in 1991. The statue has sat permanently in the vestibule of the Archaeological Museum on Žižkova Street. In the future, it is being contemplated placing this historically and artistically valuable copy in the prepared exposition of Slovak history at the Bratislava Castle.