Zprávy památkové péče 2014, 74(2):133-138

Renovation of the abbey chapel in the monastery in Zlatá Koruna in 2012-2013. Restoration of the murals and new findings

Zdeněk Chudárek, Petr Skalický

On the first floor of the abbey house of the former Cistercian monastery in Zlatá Koruna, after the middle of the 14 th century, a visually very impressive abbey chapel was built on an octagonal floor plan. The chapel has undergone several phases of construction work in the past. No later than the second decade of the 17 th century, the floor was significantly elevated, the vaulting was partially modified (the ribs were removed and two vaulting faces were united into one). Further modifications followed in the 1670's, probably also in the second half of the 18 th century, and in the 2nd quarter of the 19 th century. Most of these stages left traces of painting in the interior, but their layers were mostly irreversibly removed during repairs to the chapel in the 1940's.
In 2012 and 2013, conservation and restoration work was carried out in the interior of the abbey chapel that mostly focused on the restoration of the remains of wall paintings dating from the period from the 1360's to the latter part of the 18th century. The concept of the renovation was based on efforts to restore the chapel as much as possible to its artistically integral form, without suppressing a single of its "historical traces" that were analytically detected during the repairs of the 1940's. One of the basic conceptual premises was also the attempt to present the original sacral interior with its semantic center in the altar niche. The very successful restoration, undertaken by Karel Hrubeš, prepared everything necessary for the future finalization of the concept.
During the cleaning of the paintings, high-quality medieval figurative paintings were revealed (St. Wenceslas, the Adoration of the Magi), which are more of an exception in the Cistercian environment at this particular period. The restoration work also very successfully rehabilitated remnants of all the younger murals and opened numerous research initiatives to understanding the construction history of the building as well as to understanding its artistic decoration.

Keywords: Zlatá Koruna; abbey chapel; wall murals from the 14 th-18 th centuries; Cistercian order; restoration; concept

Published: June 1, 2014  Show citation