Master of the Provana Tomb

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The master of the Provana tomb ( pol. Mistrz Nagrobka Provany ) is an Italian sculptor of the late Renaissance who worked in Krakow , Poland between 1580 and 1600 . The artist, who is not known by name, was given his emergency name after the tomb of Prospero Provana he created in the Kraków Dominican Church .

Provana was a banker and businessman in Cracow and came from Italy. He had received the privilege of setting up and running a postal service between Venice and Cracow from the Polish King Sigismund . Provana died in Kraków in 1584. His monumental tomb in the St. Nicholas Chapel of the Dominican Church is 6 meters high and 4 meters wide, made of red marble and alabaster and is also a self-representation of the economic success of the non-aristocratic Prosperus after death.

Several other monumental burial monuments are attributed to the master of the Provana tomb , such as the grave of Marcin Leśnivolski, who died in 1593, in the Church of St. Mary in Kraków and also the grave of Pitor Kostka, who died in the same year, in the Trinity Church in Chełmża .

The works of the master of the Provana tomb are distinguished by their high level of craftsmanship. Influences of Italian sculpture, for example from Venice, can be recognized as well as possibly an influence of the Fontainebleau school from the Paris area. The grave monuments of the master from the late Renaissance are considered masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture north of the Alps and are at the transition to the Baroque .

It is proposed that the work of the master of the Provana tomb be attributed to Santi Gucci, a builder and sculptor who came from Italy and worked in Kraków. For example, he designed the Kraków Cloth Hall and created the marble tomb of King Sigismund and the tomb of Queen Anna Jagiellonica in the Sigismund Chapel of the Kraków Cathedral. Santi Gucci came from Florence and because of the stylistic differences between Florentine and Venetian sculpture, this attribution is not always recognized by experts.

literature

  • Katarzyna Mikocka-Rachubowa: Mistrz Nagrobka Provany - rzezbiarz krakowski przelomu XVI i XVII wieku (The Master of the Provana Tomb - a Krakow sculptor from the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries). In: Rocznik Historii Sztuki, 20 (1994), pp. 5-85
  • Agnieszka Madej-Anderson: Representation in a mendicant order church. The late medieval panels of the Dominicans in Krakow (Studia Jagellonioca Lipsiensia Volume 4). Thorbecke 2007 (excursus: two Italians in Krakow)