Revue Pamiatky a múzeá – Summary 3/2014

Vladimír Novák
Two-engine towing tugboat Šturec
Slovakia had not preserved any shipping vessels from the time of steam engines and the vessels which were in better technical condition, that could have been exhibited in museums, were, unfortunately, irretrievably destroyed. The towing tugboat Šturec is the last historic motor-ship in Slovakia. It was registered as a national cultural monument in 2012 and entered the collections of the Slovak Technical Museum-Transport Museum in Bratislava in April 2013.
Šturec was constructed in 1937 as a towing engine oil tanker. It was built in the Škodove závody Shipyard in Komárno, originally as a motor oil tanker Štúr. Czechoslovak Danube Shipping Joint Stock Company (ČPSD) started to use it in 1938. During the bombardment of the Bratislava Apollo refinery on June 16th 1944, the ship was hit and sunk. It was pulled out after the war and reconstructed into a motor towing tugboat in the Slovak Shipyard in Komárno during 1951 and 1952. It changed its name to Šturec. They reused the aft and engine room from the original boat and shortened the body by 14 metres. In 1982 the boat changed its ownership, moving from the Czechoslovak Danube Shipping company to the administration of the Danube River Basin company’s department for water courses, which put it out of service in 1984. The Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic decided on the 5th January 2012 to register the boat Šturec onto the list of movable national cultural monuments in the Central Register of the Monuments’ Fund with the number 12072/0. The boat was donated to the Slovak Technical Museum-Transport Museum in Bratislava on 8th April 2013.
Unfortunately, practically no technical documentation exists for this greatly damaged boat Šturec. Enthusiasts for water transport and vessels, Juraj Bohunský and Pavol Šíra, began to work on its renovation in 2005. In 2009 – 2010, they came up with the idea of opening a shipping museum, which could also present the history of the joint stock company Slovak Shipping and Ports (SPaP). In 2010 – 2013 more enthusiasts and institutions joined the works on renovating the boat.

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Jozef Medvecký
Monograph of Anton Schmidt
The publication issued by the Societatis historiae artium in Bratislava in 2013 in a limited edition, is the result of a scientific project carried out in the Art History Institute of Slovak Academy of Sciences in 2010 – 2012. In fact, however, the author of the publication, a leading expert on baroque’s art, Jozef Medvecký, has been writing about the theme for four decades.
The monograph of the baroque painter Anton Schmidt is the first complex analysis and art-historical evaluation of this Vienna-born artist, who, together with his sculptural fellow-artist Dionysius Stanetti, significantly influenced the spread and transformation of the integrated Central-European late-baroque art in the multi-cultural environment of central Slovak mining towns in the middle of the 18th century. The publication talks about the life journey and creative development of the artist in fourteen chapters. The reader will first be introduced to the artist’s work beginnings (cooperation with Giuseppe Galli Bibiena) in the 1740s. A more detailed account of individual places and objects that were artistically transformed by Schmidt, follows after he moved to Banská Štiavnica. Among the best known are Calvary in Banská Štiavnica, monastic church of Hieronymites in Štiavnické Bane, piarist church in Prievidza, manor house of the Kohárys in Svätý Anton, and parish churches in Kremnica (demolished) and Banská Bystrica. The book practically confirmed the monopoly position of Schmidt and his significance in the late-baroque painting in the central Slovak mining region. A part of the publication is a detailed catalogue of the identified painter’s works (frescos, oil paintings and sketches), a list of quoted archive sources in original, bibliography of the quoted literature and published sources, and the nominal register. The publication of the book monograph commemorates the 300 years from the painter’s birth and 240 years after his death.

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Event – Happening category

POPRAD – TATRY – SPIŠ REGION

Zuzana Čovanová Janošíková
Non-existing decoration of Poprad’s belfry
The renaissance belfries in the Spiš region, which were built separately from their churches in Vrbov, Strážky, Kežmarok, Podolínec, Spišská Sobota, Levoča, Spišská Belá and Poprad have preserved their medieval cores. The belfries in Poprad and Podolínec are often linked together, as they have a similar shape at the attic’s ridge. They were both built at the end of the 1650s – the Poprad’s belfry in 1658 and the one in Podolínec in 1659.
Today’s late-renaissance belfry in Poprad had an older predecessor, which was rebuilt by the town’s reeve Lucas Topperczer in 1592. An Italian mason who settled in Kežmarok, Ulrich Maurer, designed the constructional amendments and a Slovak carpenter Bernhardt Miller from Podolínec worked on them. A secondary preserved inscription reveals that the belfry’s construction works took place in the summer months of 1663. To be precise, the walls of the belfry were not decorated by one, but two identical inscriptions with chronostichon (a sentence, in which specific letters can be interpreted as Roman numerals, ed. note), which also dated the belfry’s late-renaissance sgraffito decoration. The inscriptions confirm that the belfry was built from the foundations: posuit fundamina.
The reconstruction of the no longer existing late-renaissance decoration with the sgraffito, as well as the analysis of the used motifs is complicated by sparse photo-documentation and only general mentions in literature. The photographs taken before the decoration’s destruction in 1958 show that the sgraffito inscriptions of the figures depicted in shrines used to be all around the walls. The attic and arcade of the belfry were originally decorated by stylised, floral ornaments. The belfry corners were also decorated, originally by an illusive bossage (projecting stones, ed. note), as was the wall at the sound outlets.
According to the authors, who saw the sgraffito decoration before its destruction, the semi-circular shrines contained figures of prophets and apostles, evangelists and saints as well as allegoric figures of science and liberal arts (septem artes liberales). The allegories of liberal arts in the Poprad’s belfry originated from the collection of copperplate reproductions of the same name, which were created by German graphic artist Georg Pencz. They were first printed about 1541. In the case of the Poprad’s belfry, this is the last known sgraffito decoration of the renaissance spirit in the Spiš region, where one would likely assume the use of younger, maybe manneristic or even early-baroque graphic inspirations.

František Žifčák
Testament of goldsmith John Szilasi
The Levoča goldsmith John Szilasi (Szilassy; 1704 – 1782) is one of the most significant representatives of the modern goldsmith’s trade in Slovakia. He worked on the verge of late baroque, but his works were largely influenced by the appearing rococo style. He created more than a hundred liturgical items, mainly monstrances, goblets, ciboria and pax instruments, often decorated with enamel medallions that depicted figural scenes from the Bible, saints’ biographies and everyday scenes. Many of them are still used during the church masses.
Szilasi’s works are quite well-known in the fine-arts literature, but the same cannot be said about his personal life, his family and the environment in which he lived and worked. The records from the registrar’s office confirm that he was born in Rožňava. This fact is further confirmed by the record from his funeral in Levoča on 9th May 1782 (gebührtig von Rosznau). The exact date of his death (6th May 1782) is recorded in the protocol of the goldsmith’s guild.
The records in the Levoča archives also register John Szilasi’s property capital. He acquired property by marrying Catharina Reuter in 1728, gaining burgher’s privileges in Levoča in 1729 and by gradually purchasing land and buildings. The increase in his property is also evident from the calculated tax (3 Rheinish golden and 17 denar coins), which made him the 18th richest citizen in Levoča. This consequently raised his authority and respectability in the town, where he held the position of the goldsmith’s guild-master from 1747 until his death.
On 18th April 1774, the Szilasi couple (John Szilasi and his second wife Catharina) wrote down their last will. This has not yet been researched, even though it is in the processed part of the Levoča Town Council’s fund. The testament, written in the usual formal form, offers lots of information about the life and property of the famous goldsmith. It confirms his biography facts gained from other sources, which reveal quite a devout relationship with his daughter from the first marriage and his effort to preserve the goldsmith’s trade in the family. On the other hand, it presents Szilasi as an artist – painter and discloses his close relationship with a generation younger goldsmith Liedemann. This most likely reflected the fact that Szilasi lost his only son due to an early death.
The document contains John Szilasi’s authentic signature with a stamp, and the name of his wife (Catharina Szilassy gebohrne Frühaufin) written by one of the will’s witnesses and signed by her with a simple cross. Levoča’s reeve Samuel Scherffel, senator and the will’s executor Ján Hauser with another will’s executor John Reich Sr. acknowledged the contents of the testament with their signatures and stamps.

Irena Pišútová
The country under the Tatras
The Spiš region’s painting in the last third of the 18th and first half of the 19th century presents a significant phenomenon in Slovakia’s landscape and figural work. It favoured the depiction of the picturesque nature under the Tatra Mountains and the historical sites that had been in its territory for centuries and increased its value. One of Levoča citizens, who graduated from the Viennese academy, John Jaobb Müller, was one such landscape painter. In his gouaches, he systematically captured the landscape with the fading tendencies of classicism. But his work also contained romanticized landscapes, which were characteristic of the so-called Spiš amateurs with an intimate, almost naïve bond with nature.
Traces of this approach can also be found in a painting by an unknown, but based on the depicted reality, undoubtedly a Spiš artist. The author of this article named the painting The Country under the Tatras. When looking at the picture’s details, natural scenery and historical monuments, it is clear that the inspiration for the painting of the unknown artist came not only from the autopsy, but also from studying the works of other Spiš painters. It is possible that the painter took inspiration mainly from Müller’s works, which according to the art historian Mária Novotná were better than average in the scope of the Central European landscape paintings.
The unknown painter’s intention was to address a large public mainly with the high number of themes. He tried to use the canvas’ dimensions of 84 x 18 cm, by assembling various images of the Spiš country and its historical sites into one picture with no relevance to reality. The composition features a stone bridge above the Hornád river near Letanovský mill. Above the bridge is the baroque-like architecture of the Camaldoli Červený kláštor monastery, where the monks lived until 1782, when the monastery was abolished by Joseph II. Behind the thick group of deciduous trees we can see part of the monumental Spiš castle on a high cliff, depicted in a romantic style. Nearby is the Romanesque-Gothic Church of St. Ladislaus in Spišský Štvrtok with the High Tatra Mountains in the background, which vanish under the snow cover at the top of the peaks.
The Country under the Tatras, painted by an unknown Spiš painter, is one of the current art-historical proofs of naïve painting in Spiš in the first half of the 19th century, which documents an emotional bond to the home country and its history.

Maroš Semančík
Green roofs in Upper Spiš region
The buildings in the Spiš region used to be covered by traditional material, the wooden shingle. There were some that used burnt shingle, and occasionally sheet metal. At the beginning of the 20th century came the asbestos-cement templates. Apart from pitched roofs, they began to construct buildings with flat or slightly slanted roofs in the 1870s. Their best prevention from extreme weather, especially from the sun and UV radiation, was the use of substrate with plants.
In summer, the green roofs inhibit the overheating of the roof construction and attic, and in winter the snow layer insulates them from cold. They also have sound-insulating properties. It is mainly their ecological aspects that are highlighted today, including their ability to catch dust and harmful pollutants. The advantage of flat roofs is the significant decrease in using wood and roof covering. The green roofs are good for lowering the risk of fire. During the 19th century Germany experienced the boom in using tar-board on flat roofs, which were designed as vegetative. The live trade contacts and exchange of information soon brought this type of roof also to the Spiš region.
The oldest recorded examples of green roofs in the mentioned region are from the High Tatras. They were in Nový Smokovec (spa house and rental villa of Dr. Szontagh) and in Starý Smokovec, where architect Gedeon Majunke from Spišská Sobota designed a radical reconstruction for the Spiš credit bank and central savings bank of the fire-damaged café (1889 – 1890). In the following years, he also built a restaurant in Starý Smokovec, where he covered the veranda’s wooden construction with a flat green roof. Majunke later applied green flat roofs also to other objects, such as the colonnades joining the buildings in Dolný Smokovec, glass stud terrace of the Tatranská Lomnica hotel (1892 – 1894), wooden verandas in front of the restaurant and café in Nový Smokovec, and veranda addition of the Weszterheim hotel in Tatranská Polianka in 1901.
Gedeon Majunke also applied green roofs in extreme alpine conditions, at Téry’s Chalet (1898 – 1899) in the High Tatras at 2015 m above sea level, as well as in a town environment, during the construction of an old house at the Spišská Sobota’s square. The green roofs were also used at the end of the 19th century on houses in Kežmarok and industrial buildings of the Scholtz factory in Poprad-Matejovce. During the First World War, architect Guido Hoepfner designed the Tatra sanatorium for the Spiš credit bank and central savings bank, in Starý Smokovec, by joining and adding extensions to the hotels of Scepusia and Csáky’s House in 1916 – 1917. The designed wooden-cement roofs of the dining room and joining tract with the hall were also built with vegetation. The green roofs were not only applied to new buildings but also to reconstructions of historical buildings mostly damaged by fires on shingle roofs (Poprad-Spišská Sobota). At the turn of the 19th and 20th century, they were also used in rural architecture.

Anna Ondrušeková
Power station in Poprad – Tatra Gallery
The power station represents an exemplary industrial building from the turn of the 19th and 20th century. The steam power station in Poprad had supplied electrical energy to tram transportation in the High Tatras and several Tatra settlements since 1912 (30 years after lighting up New York). The plant was probably built by Poprad’s construction company Hlavaj-Blistyán. The machinery (now demolished) was supplied by the Siemens-Schuckert company.
The architectural qualities of the building can only be appreciated with time. The building of the power station itself is a block construction with a preserved basement under the whole area. It has two floors above the ground. The original room layout has been preserved, but the only valuable part kept from the original interior is the metal construction and banister of the mechanic gallery. The original, 41.5 m high chimney made from rough brickwork in the eastern part dominates the power works.
The process of turning the power station to modern gallery took 17 years. In 2003, the Tatra Gallery in cooperation with the Monuments Board in Bratislava succeeded in including the building on the list of Slovakia’s cultural monuments. In 2009 they completed the first part of the plant’s general reconstruction. Another phase took place in 2013 and 2014. The reconstructed area was open to the public on 14th February 2014.
The power station of the Tatra Gallery in Poprad has become a famous institution in Slovakia as well as abroad for presenting contemporary art and cultural activities for the public, mainly the younger generation. The vision of turning the power works into a multicultural centre has come true and now it is important to sustain the enjoying popularity of artists and visitors.