Didier Martens

The Miraculous Image of Kláštor pod Znievom (Slovakia): A Composition by Quinten Massys (c. 1460–1530) with Magical Craft?

The Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption of Mary, located in the former Premonstratensian monastery of Kláštor pod Znievom (Slovakia), preserves a painting panel dating from the 1600s: a life-size, half-body representation of the Virgin and Child on a throne. The group of the Virgin and Child is based on a model created by the Flemish painter Quinten Massys. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Massys’ composition gave rise to numerous painted copies in Antwerp. These were part of a conservative aesthetic movement linked to the CounterReformation, aimed at returning to the art of the Flemish Primitives. Around 1600, the Wierix brothers produced four prints based on the prototype by Quinten Massys. It clearly served as a source for the painter of the Kláštor Virgin and Child on a Throne — painting was probably made in Southern Germany, given that the artist used basswood rather than oak for the panel. The Jesuits, who were particularly active in this region, may have brought it to Kláštor. A monumental image of the Virgin Mary was an effective weapon in the confessional struggle. In 1777, it is mentioned as ‘Gratiosa imago’ or Gnadenbild, an ‘image of grace’. Paintings that reproduce a composition created by one of the great Flemish masters of the 15th or early 16th centuries have rarely been considered as images of grace. The situation was quite different in the Duchy of Bavaria, the Austrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Hungary. There, alongside Romanesque and Gothic sculptures and a number of Byzantine icons, 15th- and 16th-century paintings or copies of these models were able to rise to the status of fully valid images of grace. The most famous one is the Maria Hilf by Lucas Cranach the Elder in Innsbruck Cathedral. As regards early Netherlandish painting, both the Gnadenbilder from Sammarei near Passau and Maria Bühel near Salzburg show how local 17th-century copies of a composition by Rogier van der Weyden could become successful images of grace. To these already well-known cases of Flemish models with ‘magic potential’, we should add the Kláštor Virgin and Child on a Throne.

Author's email:

Didier.Martens@ulb.be

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54759/ART-2024-0203

Full-text in the Digital Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences:
https://kramerius.lib.cas.cz/uuid/uuid:29dba050-14a8-4fe9-96df-39430c9878f7

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