Visual Media and Spatial Contexts

The historical region of Spiš (Central-East Slovakia) contains one of Europes richest concentrations of late medieval churches with substantial holdings of contemporary artworks. Diverse furnishings from the century before the Reformation including numerous altarpieces, sacrament houses, and private memorials can still be seen in their original spatial contexts. The project exploits the exceptional potential of this material by subjecting five particularly promising sites the collegiate church of Spišsk Kapitula, the town churches of Levoca and Spišsk Sobota, and the village churches of Stržky and Smrecany to a comprehensive analysis embracing architecture, sculpture, painting, and other visual media from ca. 1425-1525. Perceptions of late medieval church spaces have long been coloured by critical views of the contemporary boom in sacred art, which allegedly by saturating interiors with ever more elaborate furnishings has been seen as a cause of disorder and set alongside other symptoms of spiritual decline before the Reformation. The project seeks to advance beyond the prevailing view of cluttered interiors to consider the filling of the churches as a distinctive process with its own chronologies, mechanisms, and nuances. By investigating a series of sites in terms of their medieval usage, it also identifies previously unnoticed forms of order and evidence of interaction between individual objects. It thus interrogates each monument as an ensemble as a collection of component parts that only make sense when set in their spatial and functional contexts. The project uses historical and primarily art-historical methods. Case studies are first assessed through secondary literature and fieldwork. Detailed reports are then drafted on the individual sites moving from the architectural framework through the various furnishing forms. This facilitates analysis of the historical development of each ensemble as a multi-layered and potentially ordered entity. Site-specific conclusions form a basis for a thematic and regional analysis intended for presentation in book form. The innovative character of the project lies in its focus on important material including two Unesco sites (Spišsk Kapitula, Levoca) from an under-researched region, but also in its two-tier approach to the neglected subject of the late medieval sacred ensemble. On a first level, it considers the full range of artistic forms at sites that have previously been studied primarily in terms of specific aspects, genres, or artists. On a second level, it builds on individual site histories to address broader developments in sacred space, using the Spiš material as a basis for the first regional overview of its type. While focussed on Slovak material, the super-regional nature of the phenomena discussed means that the project has implications for the study of sacred art and architecture across Europe. Research project P 33726-G Michael Viktor Schwarz PR Abstract / English

The project cast new light on the history of late medieval Europe by examining a cluster of exceptionally well-preserved church interiors in the western Carpathians (present-day Slovakia, medieval Hungary), thereby creating a unique framework for interpreting the more fragmentary evidence found elsewhere in Europe. Its initial, groundlaying work involved two main tasks. Firstly, it established how such a volume of artworks survived the Reformation, examining a local debate on the role of sacred imagery and showing how the traditionalists prevailed. Secondly, it conducted a topographical survey to identify the most pertinent material. This confirmed that the densest cluster lies in the Spiš region, but also revealed the potential of the so-called Pentapolis, an alliance of major towns within the wider region: comparison of these two groups allowed the project to open up a broad spectrum of visual cultures, ranging from the village to the metropolis. On this basis, the design and workings of the church interiors were investigated in five thematic areas that have now been written up as chapters for the project's main publication. The first chapter addresses the principal art forms and charts their rapid development in the pre-Reformation period. Focusing on the most important aspect, the furnishing of altars, it describes a transition from mural paintings to enormous, free-standing altarpieces with increasingly lavish materials and imagery. The next two chapters explore the layouts of the churches and the interactions of the new furnishings with devotional practices. Chapter 2 looks at the way large formations of altarpieces structured activities in the sanctuary and its surroundings, revealing the development of highly standardised ensembles and their reform in the decades around 1500. Chapter 3 turns to the larger space west of the choir, which accommodated the congregation and was equipped with a distinctive and similarly standardised set of furnishings that show growing sensitivity to the needs of layfolk. The final two chapters foreground the main protagonists shaping these environments. Chapter 4 examines patrons and their impact at different types of site. It contrasts the heterogeneous situation in the towns - where collective commissions are found alongside the individual interventions of confraternities, patricians, and the Hungarian kings - with the more centralized patronage of a powerful clerical chapter and magnate family at the ecclesiastical centre of the Spiš region. The last chapter addresses the changing role of artists and their workshops, examining the emergence of a new type of lead artist or "master of furnishings", whose competencies increasingly included the coordination of visual media and their spatial integration. It contrasts the artistic freedom afforded by major commissions with the awkward task of fitting furnishings into cluttered peripheral spaces, where the move towards grand planning and finely articulated topographies reached its limits.