Jana Marešová

Jan Jakub Quirin Jahn and Art-Historical Topography: On Two Unknown Manuscripts by Jahn

This article, accompanied by an edition of manuscripts by Jan Quirin Jahn (1739–1802), explores the relationship between the work of woodcutter and printmaker Jan Willenberg (1571–1613) and the reception of his oeuvre in the literary work of the painter and scholar Jan Quirin Jahn. Willenberg’s drawings of Bohemian towns and castles — today known as the Strahov Sketchbook — served as source material for Jahn’s studies on the history of castle and urban architecture. Of these, only the one focused on castles was published in Jahn’s lifetime: Historische Bemerkungen über die ehemaligen festen Schlösser und Bürgen in Böhmen bis zum dreissigjährigen Kriege, which appeared in 1797 in Apollo, a literary and cultural journal edited by his friend August Gottlieb Meissner. Jahn also planned a complementary work on urban architecture, based on the manuscript Vor dem 30 Jährigen Krieg. Von den Städten, but it remained unpublished for reasons that remain unclear. This article contextualises Jahn’s own topographically oriented texts alongside contemporary literature addressing similar themes. In conclusion, the study presents new information concerning the original provenance of Willenberg’s drawings.

Author's email:

maresova@udu.cas.cz

DOI: HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.54759/ART-2025-0205

Full-text in the Digital Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences:
https://kramerius.lib.cas.cz/uuid/uuid:7bb1076b-32e8-448d-9421-40c86951f6dc_1

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