Tüskés Anna (szerk.): Omnis creatura significans - Tanulmányok Prokopp Mária 70. születésnapjára (2009)

Antik és középkori művészet

Juraj Gembicky The Bell Foundry Workshop of the So-Called Gaal Family in the Spis region Until today there exist, and are in use, some of the best representatives of the medieval bell foundry-hand­craft in Slovakia: gothic bells of the best quality, as well as a collection of unique medieval bipartite calyx­shaped bronze baptismal fonts, mostly still in use in the territory of the Spis region. All of them came from the so-called Gaal family bell foundry workshop, with very typical relief decorations, epigraphic ornamen­tation and perfect design.1 They are real examples of the diversity and progressivism of the bell foundry handcraft in our territory, together with many lost or still not discovered bronze-cast candlesticks, lamps, tables, sculptures, liturgical vessels and other kinds of products of this trade. Master Conrad (called “Gaal”) is the founder of our most important and earliest represented medieval non-monasterial bell foundry workshop in Slovakia, who, as a bell founder for this territory, is also the ear­liest known by name.2 The so-called Gaal workshop (or Gaal foundry) in Spisská Nová Ves (Slovakia) was active between 1357 and 1516. In scholarly publica­tions it was called so based on the family name of most of the masters from there, reconstructed from published historical sources, where the name “Gaal- naw,” contracted as “Gaal,” is mentioned.3 In 1357, master Conrad (“Conrad campanista”),4 working to­gether with his brothers Nicolas and John (“Nicolao et Johanni Campanorum fusoribus”),5 cast probably one of the largest known bells of medieval Europe (with a lower diameter of 280 cm, a height of 300 cm, and a weight of around 13 000 kg, according to the recon­struction based on research of the bell-form and the place of its casting) for the royal court in Visegrád.6 King Louis the Great, of the House of Anjou, gave him several privileges as a reward for this bell.7 It was the beginning of his bell founding carrier, during which Fig. 1. The reconstruction of the big bell in Visegrád. Drawing: Gergely Búzás. Fig. 2. Revuca: not-preserved medieval bell Qvirinfrom Hans Wagner. Photograph from publication: DUBOVSKY, D.: Revúcke kostoly, zvony a ich tvorcovia. Revúca 2004. his activities as well as his followers’ workshops were relocated to the Spis region in today’s Slovakia, with its centre in Spisská Nová Ves, with easy access to natu­ral sources—copper, wood and tin (very close to the centre, Krakow in Poland).8 There is also one inter­esting hypothesis in campanological literature about an earlier bell foundry workshop (the so-called pre- Gaal workshop, connected with examples of baptismal fonts in Tvarozná, Stará Lesná and in Kosice), active here before the time of the establishment of the Con­rad family workshop in Spis, which would probably es­tablish a continuity with the previous activities, and it would also assume its ornamental structure forms.9 As for the concrete works of master Conrad there is, for example, the bronze baptismal font in Ővedlár (originally cast for the locality Stillbach), in whose decoration we can find 10 forms of the coat of arms of Louis the Great of the House of Anjou;10 the big bell in the village of Kysak (near Kosice) from 1375, the old­est dated preserved bell in Slovakia,11 and the great bell in Hrabusice (Spis), from the 14th century, which, according to legend, comes from the Carthusian monastery in Klástorisko (Lapis refugii) in Spis.12 In the latest unpublished article of Juraj Spiritza'S there are other works attributed to master Conrad: the lost bell in Batizovce, the lost bell from the Spis castle (with a fragment found),M the bell from Nizné Lapse (today in the East-Slovakian museum in Kosice),x5 as well as the so-called Middle-bell from campanile in Poprad, Spisská Sobota,16 which might be connected with the fragments of the bell found in the crypt of St. Leonard in Wawel in Krakow. x7 Regarding bell foundry activities in the period after Conrad (from the 14th to the 15th centuries) we find bell founder John from Spisská Nová Ves (“Johannes Glo- kengiesser,” sometimes mentioned in literature as Ján Weygel),18 whose activities were recorded during his stay in Poland between 1386 and 1389, where he left 107

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