Late Gothic Altarpiece from Chudenice in the Vicissitudes of Time
The article follows the fate of the Late Gothic altarpiece in the Church of St John the Baptist in Chudenice from the time of its origin in the early 16th century to the present. For several centuries, this medieval artwork served as a medium for family presentation and memory and during the 19th and 20th centuries, it underwent multiple adaptations and restoration interventions. The altarpiece is viewed as a model example of the functioning, use, and perception of one work over a long period of time. This is made possible because of the unusual wealth of archival materials related to the altarpiece as well as the church and its furnishings. The altarpiece in Chudenice played (along with the mural paintings in the presbytery) a substantial role in the presentation of the ancient and prominent family of its donors, the reason why it was purposefully preserved despite the multiple modernisations of the church.
Keywords: Late Gothic – medieval altarpiece – Chudenice altarpiece – Chudenice – Czernins of Chudenice – Bedřich Wachsmann – Gustav Miksch – Bohuslav Slánský
Published: June 15, 2024 Show citation
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), which permits non-comercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is properly cited. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.