Journal ARS 39 (2006) 2

Miloslava BODNÁROVÁ – Katarína CHMELINOVÁ

Umelci a umeleckí remeselníci Prešova v 16. - 18. storočí
[Prešov Artists and Artificers from the 16th to the 18th Century]

(Summary)

Prešov is one of important trade and cultural centres in North-East Slovakia, which flourished exactly in the early modern time. According to the position, various researchers with different specialisation were attracted by its history. Despite this fact, there is still a lot of unknown things. For example - number of Early Modern time art works in the town and its surrounding were done by for us anonymous authors - it is a typical problem of the local arthistorical research. Unlike many other Slovakian towns, Prešov has abnormally well-preserved many kinds of archive materials from the 16th to the 18th century. History of art used only a fragment of it till these days. The article focused on materials of Prešov town-council, which are preserved in the local State archive. This text brings the list of artist, artificers and relative professions (mason, lapicide etc.), which was reached from continuous records of newly accepted townsmen in Prešov from the 16th to the beginning of the 19th century. Only a small part of this records was published with different intents and so in different extant. We supplement the base of Prešov dictionary of authors accepted as townsmen by information from local marriage and death registers, affording the most relevant statements to the life of individual masters. We also start to study of legal and juridical affairs, mainly testaments, form which related data are partially improved in the text. In addition, obtained data about authors were confronted with known facts about Prešov's artistic milieu, as well as information from similar published dictionaries of artists and artificers from Slovakia. Quoted sources are expressly the richest for the basic information about masters in the region. Naturally, neither the list of Prešov's artists and artificers is finally complete, because it was not necessary to be accepted as a townsman, when someone worked for the town or its citizens.