The National Technical Museum presented a previously unknown veduta of the monastery in Plasy from the 18th century.

In June 2017, the National Technical Museum purchased a unique veduta with a view of the monastery in Plasy in Vienna. It is a coloured pen drawing measuring 210 x 294 mm, which is neither dated nor signed by the artist, but was probably made in the last years of the monastery. It differs from all surviving and known vedutas.

While most of the buildings are depicted in their actual form, a few buildings are shown in a state that was planned but never realised. This applies in particular to the extension 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 the last phase of its existence.

The inscriptional ribbon with the text ‘Prospectus of the Royal Monastery of the Cistercian Order of Plasy in the Kingdom of Bohemia’ proves that the veduta was created before the dissolution of the monastery, which took place in autumn 1785. On the reverse it is signed ‘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, and 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 veduta can be dated to the period before 1785. Its exact classification among other depictions of the Plzeň monastery will be the subject of further research.

it will be examined by the Technical Museum in Plasy.