Publication details
Trzy czeskie szkoły sztuki sakralnej w epoce fin de siècle'u
| Title in English | Three Czech schools of sacred art in the period of fin de siècle |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Sacrum et Decorum |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://journals.ur.edu.pl/setde/issue/view/611 |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.15584/setde.2025.18.2 |
| Keywords | sacred visual art; religious syncretism; idealistic concept of art; School of Religious and Historical Painting at the Prague Academy; František Sequens; Beuron School of Art; Desiderius Peter Lenz; Pantaleon Jar. Major; František Bílek; Viktor Foerster |
| Description | This article is devoted to Catholic sacred visual art in the lands of the Bohemian Crown between 1880 and 1914, developed in three different types of art schools. The most influential trend in Christian art in nineteenth-century Central Europe was Nazarenism. Education according to its rules was conduc- ted by František Sequens, who ran a specialised studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, called the “School of Religious and Historical Painting” (1880–1896). The Beuron School of Sacred Art, operating within the Beuron Congregation of the Order of St Benedict, drew partly on the impulses of Nazarenism. After their exile from Germany, the congregation found their main home at the Emmaus Monastery Na Slovanech in Prague from 1880 to 1886. The radical con- cept of hieratic art of its founder, Desiderius Peter Lenz, was not widely accepted, with a significant exception constituted by the decoration of St Gabriel’s Church in Smíchov, Prague (1889–1899). Lenz’s school was also completed by several Czech students, who continued its tradition well into the 1920s and 1930s. František Bílek, an outstanding sculptor and universal creator of Czech Art Nouveau, also founded his own art school, which operated for almost a decade from 1899. All three schools declared their commitment to an ide- alistic concept of art, but differed in their creative approach to various aspects of religious experience: from idealised histori- cal narrative, through adorational exaltation of the sacred, to symbolic evocation of mystical visions. |
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