The NTM managed to obtain a previously unknown unique veduta of the Plasy monastery from the period before the monastery was dissolved in 1785. It was presented to the public on the occasion of the bell blessing ceremony for the Centre of Building Heritage in Plasy on Saturday 22 July 2017. Visitors will be able to see the original until mid-August in a vaulted display case in the entrance to the NTM CSD Plasy Building Exhibition, after which it will be stored in the air-conditioned archive depository of the National Technical Museum

“At first glance, the veduta is interchangeable with the already known depictions of the monastery, but if we compare the drawings, we will find that this one differs,” said Martin Ebel, PhD, Director of the Museum of Architecture and Construction of the National Technical Museum, while presenting it. This concerns in particular the completion of the north wing of the prelature and the east wing of the upper stables. In contrast to other depictions of the ideal form of the monastery, the newly found veduta does not show the planned but never realised new monastery church. It may therefore have been a perspective of a reduced programme of completion of the monastery in its last phase,” explained Martin Ebel.
The museum had purchased the veduta a few weeks earlier in Vienna. It is a coloured pen drawing on paper measuring 210 x 294 mm, a size comparable to A4. It is neither dated nor signed by the artist, but was probably created in the last years of the monastery’s operation. This is evidenced, among other things, by an inscription ribbon with the text ‘ Prospectus of the Royal Monastery of the Cistercian Order of Plasy in the Kingdom of Bohemia’. It can therefore be dated to the period before 1785, when the monastery was dissolved. On the reverse is the signature ‘P.[ater] Franciscus Stöhr Cisterciensis Plass’, but this is probably not the name of the author, but of the owner. After the dissolution of the monastery, Franciscus Stöhr (1751 – 1803) served as the headmaster of the normal school in Plasy from 1785 to 1801, then as the parish priest of Plasy until his death. The authorship of the veduta can be tentatively attributed to the master mason Martin Prusík, who made several similar detailed depictions of monastery estates for the Plasy monastery.
The exact timing of the other depictions of the Plzeň monastery will be the subject of further research.

Press release 28 July 2017
Mgr. Kristýna Koderová

PR and Public Relations Department
Email: kristyna.koderova@ntm.cz
Tel.: 373 300 744 / Mob.: 777 710 802