Kryštof Loub — Petr Macek — Filip Facincani

Gothic Architecture as Seen in the 18th Century: Evidence from a Newly Discovered Drawing of the Monastic Church at Zbraslav

For a long time, the medieval form of the monastic church at Zbraslav (Aula Regia) was reconstructed on the basis of a drawing by František Lorenz (from 1854), which he made on the basis of a Baroque drawing discovered in 1850. That earlier drawing depicted both a view and a ground plan of the medieval appearance of the monastery and of the church itself. Since then, numerous scholars have debated how reliable that now-lost drawing actually was. A previously unnoticed drawing held in the Collection of Prints and Drawings of the National Gallery in Prague reveals, upon closer inspection, not only numerous deviations from Lorenz’s copy, but also affinities between its individual elements and the work of architects such as Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel, Ferdinand Maxmilián Kaňka, and others.

The present study seeks to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the creation of this largeformat drawing and, based on its evidentiary value, to reconstruct the medieval appearance of the monastic church. Indeed, the drawing’s fate in the period shortly after 1700 suggests that the aforementioned architects may have known it and that it may have played a decisive role in shaping the so-called Baroque Gothic style in Bohemia.

Author's email:

krystof.loub@ff.cuni.cz, petr.macek@ff.cuni.cz, facincani.filip@npu.cz

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54759/ART-2025-0401



< back