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Kuks Nativity Scene
Old Rocks in the New Forest
Petr Pithart, Chairman of the Czech Senate
New York, 27 April 2001
The New Forest is, in fact, an old name of a forest which grows over, as well as through, wondrous Baroque sculptures near Zivec, a small community in Eastern Bohemia. The woods were already known as the New Forest when Matthias Braun discovered shapes so far unseen in the local sandstone rocks, when he, with an astounding certainty of a creator, unfolded them and brought them out for the less discerning eyes to see.
The New forest and the rock, which appears to jut out of the earth in several spurts, are being drawn apart. The old New Forest keeps replenishing and restoring itself, and thus gains the appearance of freshness, while the rocks grow older and the mark of time more visible. Time gnaws at them mercilessly like a hungry beast.
The figures of humans and animals, transported by Braun from the worlds of reality and mythology, from the realms of sober reason and pious faith, into the local sandstone, age even faster.
The dramatically undulating surface of his sculptures literally tempts the heat and frost, the draught and humility, the wind and rain, to perform their act of destruction. Similarly, it provokes the inquisitive tourist, the obsessive builder of all kinds of roads, the clumsy rescuer, the vandal. It invites the relentlessly clinging moss and lichen, the silencing snowdrift, and the omnivorous acid rain to the feast of destruction.
In a century or two, Braun's sculptures, here and there reduced to fuzzy ink drawings or faded photographs, will no longer be legible. They will turn back to rock, to a worn out stump of times once full and dramatic.
The likelihood of this happening increases, because what recedes most quickly is the world of animated imagination inhabited both by Braun and by Spork, the owner of the estate, the commissioner of Braun's art-work, a baroque catholic fascinated by death, but also a secret masonic admirer of reason.
Braun's and Spork's Nativity Scene in the New Forest near Kuks is a code which remains unbroken. Today, our mind's eye can still replace the few missing limbs, picture the scattered dogs, and sense the meaning of the excited motions, suggested by the torsos of the figures. We can still empathize with the humble souls of hermits, the captivated kings welcoming the birth of the Lord, the penitent Holy Mary Magdalene or John the Baptist. We still can, if we want to.
I came to New York to tell you, that we want to, that we desire to. Generations of our ancestors wanted it, but were not capable of it, as it was beyond them. Of course, we have to make choices today; we all have to prioritize. We can not salvage everything. The monuments of the past multiply, as history -- the waking time of human culture -- somehow keeps stretching. We stretch it back through our will, through our cognition, and time stretches it forward, independently of our will. After all, what yesterday stood in our way as a rusting old factory from the beginning of last century, becomes today a monument, and moves us, almost surprisingly.
I think of this very visually. I picture us carefully loading the growing heap of monuments on a wagon, on a leaky cart of our memory, when we conserve them over and over, often imperfectly, store them in museums, depositories, galleries and books. In short, we obstinately drag them behind us. As we refuse to let go, all that materialized memory grows heavier, and the wagon often stalls. No wonder we sometimes despair. It seems to us that we will run out of steam hauling it. At times, our endeavor appears to be a folly, a futile rebellion against the predominance of time.
Will there be a time when we leave the overloaded vehicle of our waking memory behind like a wreck on the side of the road? Will we at least accept that some of the monuments drop on the road by accident, or depending on whether their own waning strength suffices to keep them up on the wagon?
Institutions like the World Monuments Fund are an exceptionally sophisticated cultural creation, no less cultural than, say, Braun's baroque sculptures. They guarantee that the wagon with the materialized cultural memory of the human kind will not be left by the road, but also that the most valuable and appreciated monuments will not fall through to perdition and oblivion, for the fund is driven by the ancient words of encouragement that God helps those who help themselves. In other words: if you do not even want to try, then give up all hope.
Let us try to slow down the passage of time in the New Forest; we will certainly not be able to stop it. Let us try once again, but this time more thoroughly, what people in our countries have attempted for more than a century. Let us hold together, for as long as we can, the sand grains that constitute the crumbly stone of Braun's sculptures. Let us save them from falling apart, otherwise the Nativity and hermitages will turn to heaps of dirt along the road, to drifts that cover our footprints on the road we travel, and veil our hindsight.
If we do not know where from, we will not know where to. If our road from the past is not legible, it will lead nowhere. It was in defiance of this nothingness of life that Matyas Braun carved out his figures. They call us from the New Forest all the way to New York.
They call us, and their voice keeps fading.
Forest Sculpture Monument "Betlem" near Kuks
Jiri T. Kotalik, President of the Academy of Fine Arts
New York, 27 April 2001
On the occasion of this evening celebration, it is a big honor for me to shortly present a remarkable, however a very little known monument of the Czech baroque art - a complex of rock sculptures by Matthias Bernard Braun in Novy les near Kuks. I am not the only one who considers this complex to be an exceptional part of the world culture treasury and I am extremely pleased that World Monuments Fund, one of the organizers of this evening, has contributed to the consciousness of the significance of this art realization as well as to its preservation. I would like to thank its honorary committee for the initiative and help in preserving the extremely rich cultural heritage of a small country in the heart of Central Europe.
The complex of a hospital and a former spa in Kuks together with the complex of rock sculptures in a nearby Novy les belong to the most important monuments of High Baroque in Central Europe. They are situated in East Bohemia, about 93 miles northeast of Prague, near the regional center and historical town Hradec Kralove (Koniggratz). They resulted up from the initiative of a well-educated and art-loving earl Franz Anton Sporck, a typical cavalier of the baroque period. This descendant of an imperial general from the 30-years´ war devoted enormous financial means to cultural support and thus he wanted to gain respect among traditional provincial aristocratic families. He contributed to the development of baroque cultural by supporting large building projects and other activities, for example by a rich edition of his own printing house, graphic workshop and mint, where excellent European, especially German artists were employed. Among others, thanks to Sporck Italian opera was introduced in Bohemia, as a patron of music he was in contact with Johannes Sebastian Bach.
His country residence Kuks was, beside Prague, the main center of his activities. Here he created a unique work of baroque urbanism, the building program of which expresses the extreme polarity of the period of baroque representing secular pleasure-seeking and spiritual asceticism as a permanent memento of the vanity of life and always present death (Memento Mori). After the discovery of a curative power of the springs in this region in 1694, Sporck began to build an area, the oldest part of which was a wooden spa house and Lady Chapel. On both banks of the Elbe connected by a bridge in 1700, there gradually arose a range of buildings dominated by a castle with a spa on one bank and the area of a cloister, a hospital and a church with a family vault on the other bank. The urbanistic concept of the area was probably formed after the design of a foremost Italian architect Giovanni Batista Alliprandi who worked at that time in Bohemia. The hospital with a gallery of sculptures, the originals of which are nowadays situated in the lapidarium and are replaced by copies, together with a fragment of both staircases remained the only relics of the whole area that was repeatedly damaged by floods and fires finished by a large demolition in 1901. However, the reconstruction of the original situation is possible thanks to a rich pictorial material, old engravings and vedute, which served as the basis of the lately created model of Kuks that forms a part of a large exposition of the 10th century architecture that takes place at Prague Castle this year.
The axis perpendicular to the valley and connecting the windows of the earl’s bedroom with the eternal light in the burial crypt became the basis of the composition. The complex of the spa was formed by a range of buildings consisting of spa rooms, a pub, a theater, a promenade arcade and a staircase with a waterfall. In the middle of the area, there was a racetrack, a skittle alley, a firing range, a dovecote, a summerhouse and a number of other attractions. At the time of its greatest flowering, before the death of earl Sporck in 1738, Kuks was as well- known as legendary Carlsbad. The four-winged hospital, founded in 1696 for the benefit of the order of Brothers of Mercy for one hundred of the dispossessed serfs in Sporck’s demesne. It was built on a ground plan of two symmetric sections around a paradisiacal courtyard. Next to the courtyard, there was a garden and a hermitage with a cemetery in the axis. The central point of the whole area was The Holy Trinity Church, which was built in 1707 by an architect Giovanni Battista Alliprandi in cooperation with a master-builder Pietro Nittola. The church on an oval ground plan with rectangular chapels, a gallery and a vestibule was vaulted by Czech monumental vault and consecrated in 1717. The basement served as a family mausoleum. The side wings of the convent and hospital were built at the same time as the church, by 1719.
Eminent sculptors of the Czech baroque, for example Hieronym Kohl - the author of the figures of tritons at the waterfall, or his nephew, Jan Bernard Kohl-Severa, who decorated the front of the hospital church by the statues of Faith, Hope and Love and the central group of the Annunciation of Virgin Mary, participated in the decoration of the area. The workshop of the sculptor Matthias Bernard Braun, one of the leading personalities of European radical baroque participated in the decoration of Kuks as early as since 1712. Braun, who was born as a serf of a Cistercian cloister Stams in a small Austrian village in the foothills of the Alps between Munich and Innsbruck, came to Bohemia around the year 1700 and had a meteoric career as an artist thanks to his first work, statue of St. Luitgard on the Charles Bridge. This follower of Bernini and representative of the robust expressive baroque sculptural style realized a number of works in Prague as well as in Bohemian country. Let us mention at least the sculptural decoration of Clam-Gallas palace, the terraced Vrtba garden or Jesuit college in Clementinum. The series of stone statues that were placed on the terrace in front of the hospital in 1719 was Braun’s crowning achievement. Around the central statue of Religion, several allegorical figures of Beatification and a pair of angels that represent a Blissful and a Piteous Death were placed. Next to the figures of angels, there are two lines of 24 figures symbolizing Virtues and Vices. Their iconographic depiction full of symbols and allegories corresponds with the schemes as they are presented in the graphic of that period, for example Iconology by Cesar Ripa, and through its dramatic impact point out the urgent moral appeal addressed to the audience.
Several years later further decorations followed, this time they were connected with landscape adaptations and sculptures in nature. In the forests around Kuks, earl Sporck gradually built four hermitages, several summerhouses and spring with fountains and sculptural decorations, Avenue of Seven Springs, Statue of Holy Trinity in Stanovice and finally Chapel of Advancement of St. Cross. Most of these attractions emerged along the forest track from Kuks to so-called Novy les (New Forest), in the neighborhood of which Jesuits from Zirc started to build Calvary. Sporck and Braun developed an idea of finishing Calvary through a unique scenery of religious pictures of holy hermits and scenes from the life of Christ, which should have culminated by a great Nativity scene and Adoration of the Magi (Betlem in Czech) that finally named the whole area. Matthias Bernard Braun took this exceptional commission and he, in cooperation with his workshop, the members of which were foremost baroque sculptors of that time, carved a series of biblical scenes and statues of the saints directly into the sandstone boulders that formed a part of solid rock massifs. Monumental, larger than life statues, carved gradually between the years 1723 and 1732 without any complicated preparations directly on the spot bear testimony to the mastery of their creator and his huge imagination. The close connection of the statues with the nature inspired by Sporck’s romantic fondness for visiting mountain massifs and bizarre sandstone rocks as well as the memory of Braun’s birthplace in Tyrolean Alps create a unique atmosphere emphasized by the changes of light qualities during the daily cycle as well as the vegetative cycle of the seasons. A range of small buildings, woodcuts and paintings located on the rocks or cut directly into trees also form a part of the whole illusive theater (Theatrum Sacrum) inspired by the spirit of Italian places of pilgrimage. We know about most of them thanks to a detailed description from 1729. Most of them disappeared without a trace, some were moved to another place and thus in the location remained only seven following monumental works.
The first of them represents beatified Jan Garinus, a hero from a famous Spanish legend connected with the Cloister Monserrat near Barcelona. The legend is about a hermit who committed a sin and he decided to live in a very thick, wild forest as a penance. Only an innocent human being, who face to face to this horrible creature crawling on all fours could reply to his bestial roar by a Christian greeting, could help him to find his salvation. Thus, Garinus reveals to nowadays´ visitors as suddenly as his legendary predecessor on the threshold of his cave, on the wall of which there is a crucifix. From the iconographic point of view, the statue of Garinus represents a unique object in the world. His companion, another hermit, beatified Onufrius reposes nearby dressed in animal skins and leaning on a skull. The musculature of his athletic build and his face unshaven and hirsute evokes this supernatural being as well as the burden and drama of its fate.
Another hermitic figure represents St. John the Baptist, reposing lying down on a desert, dressed in camel hair with the Lamb of God by his side. Although it is just a torso, it does not weaken its impressiveness. This we can say also about a fragment of another lying hermitic figure in the neighborhood, which represents St. Maria Magdalena, again with the necessary attribute of a skull. A monumental fountain is placed separately. It is carved out of one piece of stone and on its edge, a famous scene from the New Testament is depicted. It tells the story of Jesus Christ and a good Samaritan. She is offering him a jug of water. Although we are able to identify individual figures just by means of allusions, the basic composition remains clearly readable. The preserved torsos with the traces of a gusty sculptural handwriting stimulate our fantasy when imagining the original situation of the statues, which was much more dominant towards its surroundings because they were from wild self-seeding vegetation and they were most probably polychrome.
The central point of the sculptural area Novy les is represented by two large reliefs carved into a rock. One of them depicts the scene of St. Hubert´ s conversion (the oldest statue in the area). St. Hubert met a stag during a hunt. His head was crowned by a shining crucifix between his horns. At the same time, this relief can be understood as an honor to the patron of hunt, a favorite pastime of that period, which was also one of Earl Sporck’s hobbies. Earl Sporck himself brought the tradition of par force hunts and musical use of horns from the atmosphere of the French court of Louis XIV. to Central Europe. Besides, he was also a founder of the prestigious order of St. Hubert, which he personally awarded to the then king Charles VI.
Further monumental sculptural composition on a rock wall represents the Nativity scene with the necessary staffage of adoring shepherds and a donkey with a cow in the background. Three kings, whose oriental origin is expressed by a camel caravan, are coming from the right side to tribute to a new lord of the world. Separate statues, placed in front of the relief and on the roof of the man-made cave (the inventory registers 26 pieces!), which underlined the deep illusion of a theatrically composed scene, initially formed a part of the grandiose composition.
The complex of forest statues in Novy les near Kuks is the evidence of an inspirational connection of two extremely inventive personalities, patron Sporck and a sculptor Braun, who created a bizarre and in a way unique work together. Its importance is given by a unique utilization of specific conditions, which enabled to underline some characteristic features of baroque works. We can mention, for example, a wide context given by the scope of a monumental landscape composition of the whole area including its connections with Kuks and the whole Sporck’s estate as well as a distinctive accent on the interconnection of the free nature cleverly decorated by architectonic and sculptural staffage. The fondness for a dramatic conjuring of selected religious scenes typical for this period as well as a sense of a visual synthesis attack the senses of the spectator. A dramatic modeling emphasizes a grandiose feeling of a sculptural material and a distinctly expressive interpretation. Thanks to the admirable creative performance, the author of these statues, Matthias Bernard Braun ranks, among the leading representatives of a so-called radical and dynamic Baroque and fulfills even the most demanding requirements on the quality of a work of art. The extent of authenticity of the whole complex is also high. It has changed during the course of time and aging and after three centuries remained without any additional interventions, supplements or radical repairs. The unusual technique of carving of the sculptural works directly into a solid rock itself insures a place of honor in the annals of European sculpture of 18th century.
The complex belongs among the unique objects also in the world context. Of course, we know from the history of art about several rare cases of the use of rock massifs for creating monumental plastics, for example in the rock temples in Egyptian Abu Simbel, Syrian Petra or a complex of Buddhist temples in the virgin forests of Burma, Laos and India. Bizarre sculptural compositions that formed a part of the mannerist Italian gardens, for example in Bomarza near Viterbo or in Pratolin near Florence, could be considered as predecessors and a possible inspiration for Braun’s Nativity scene - Betlem. Especially the figure of Apennine is very famous. It is a kind of personification of a mountain massif set up of hewed boulders supplemented by stucco imitating a stalactite decoration. We can find similar attraction of smaller size also in other baroque and romantic gardens, for example in the complex of a rock garden Sanspareil at the Zwernitz castle near Bayreuth (1745).
This tradition remained lively also in the course of 19th century, both in the decoratively understood folk art and in the projects emphasizing the ideas of a new statehood, the best representatives of which are portraits of American presidents in the rock massif of the Black Hills in South Dakota (Mount Rushmore National Memorial). We can find several similar examples also in Bohemia, for example in the work of Vaclav Levy, who was inspired by Braun. His work can be seen around the Libìchov castle or in the complex of folk relieves in North Bohemia. However, all the named examples are based on entirely different content and style in the form of sacred altars, monumental decorations or official monuments. The uniqueness of Braun’s Betlem lies in a dominant creative part, which thanks to its spontaneous art conception remains also today actual and modern.
The uniqueness of Braun’s statues was reflected in the period of Romanticism, nevertheless their real importance for the formation of the tradition of Czech sculpture was appreciated only in the beginning of 20th century by the protagonists of modern art. In the 30s, a period of a regenerated interest in baroque art began and this instigated first repair works of the statues, which concentrated on mechanical and chemical cleaning in the spirit of limited techniques. However, this caused an acceleration of the destructive process of stone rather than its deceleration. Nevertheless, the awareness of the importance of the complex found its expression in an imposing publishing and exhibition activity and in the efforts to insure an adequate preservation of monuments in the whole area. Kuks and Betlem were registered in the State List of Immovable Cultural Monuments in 1970. The area of Kuks was lately granted a status of a National Cultural Monument - Nowadays the same status has been intensively prepared for Betlem and both complexes together with a protective area will be declared a zone of preservation of monuments in a Cultural Landscape.
The permanently worsening condition of Braun’s sculptures in Novy les near Kuks instigated a number of particular steps that contributed to opening a new phase of their preservation. Civic initiatives, for example the association Novy les, the society of visual artists Mánes or Society for Technologies of the Preservation of Monuments, joined with the conclusions of a complex investigation project of a team of experts published in 1996 under a title The Sandstone Sculptures by M.B.Braun in Betlem near Kuks. Especially thanks to the program World Monument Fund, the contacts of which were instigated by Mrs. Monica Abbott, in 2000 Betlem was registered in the list of the most endangered monuments in the world. This finally helped to change radically the up to that time hesitant approach of the supreme authorities of preservation of monuments in the Czech Republic. By declaring a National Cultural Monument, the unique area at last gets the highest national category of a preservation of monuments. At the same time, it was decided that the Czech Republic would present the official candidature of Betlem for the registration into the World List of Cultural and natural heritage UNESCO in 2005.
The most important result of the above mentioned initiatives is creating a supreme expert committee, that was given the task of observing and coordinating the particular stages of the project for preserving the area together with the Institute for Monument Preservation at Pardubice. The basic strategy was chosen with regard to an exceptional character of the monument in long-term perspective, the individual phases of restoration being planned by the year 2008. Besides, the realization of the immediate measures for the security of the area and its necessary annual continuous maintenance, essential surveys (archeological, hydro geological, dendrological, technological, art-historical) should proceed by the year 2004. It is also the deadline for terrain adaptations, which would re-establish the original situation including the natural regime of the springs. This could solve the main problem, which is, according to the present surveys, underground water seeping into the stone blocks. During the utilization of the newly opened quarries in this location, where stone was quarried and transported for building a fortress in a nearby Josefov since 1780, the terrain was raised and a new road was made. The new road in a form of a manmade dam blocked the natural flowing off the springs and led to their accumulation in an underground pond, from where the water rises through capillary attraction into the solid rock massifs, from which the sculptures are carved. At present, the chemical composition of the underground water and rainwater and the presence of soluble salts in the stone and its diffuse resistance as well as the existence of microorganisms, i.e. mosses and lichens on the surface of the statues are systematically monitored. To reach a bigger objectivity of these measurements, some of the sculptural groups were covered with a roof. Unfortunately, the roofs are entirely unsuitable and will be removed next year.
Only after the evaluation of all impacts and after collecting all the necessary documents and information, it will be possible to define and find an optimal and careful way of the preservation, which is a spontaneous subject of discussions between the public and experts these days. There is a great diversity of ideas from a mere passive security of the area and its leaving at the mercy of the powers of nature, which would swallow them in the course of time and the boundaries between the artificial and organic would be wiped off, to radical proposals of cutting out the original stone blocks and their transport to lapidarium and replacing them by modern copies. My personal opinion is that a less radical solution will have to be chosen with the utilization of the most advanced technological knowledge.
It is feasible to save the unique area of Novy les step by step or at least slow down its decomposition and ward its immediate danger off only on condition that a necessary funding in a required amount is insured from the budgets of Ministry of Culture, a higher self-governing territorial unit, a regional institute for monument preservation and other partners. However, it is closely connected with a new conception and organization of the preservation of cultural heritage in the Czech Republic, which has to create conditions for a more effective preservation of the fund of monuments within the bounds of a newly prepared law. In this connection I would like to thank through here present Mr. Chairman of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic Petr Pithart the senators, who on their own initiative prepared a public meeting on the topic of the problems of financing the repairs of monuments and are ready to continue in these praiseworthy activities. A further condition of a final success is also an intensive effort for an effective international presentation and promotion of the unique values of this area, which even in a world context represents a unique phenomenon. And that was the sense of my today’s lecture, the aim of which was to present forest sculpture monument Betlrm near Kuks on the occasion of a series of activities presenting Czech baroque culture in the Czech Center.
I am very pleased to be able to give you a clearer picture of the memorable atmosphere of Betlrm through besides imperfect slides also very impressive photographs by a Czech artist Pavel Nesleha. The admirable creative power of Braun’s mastery, which was once by a French painter Fernard Léger during his visit of Kuks compared to a genius of Michelangelo, was since 19th century an inspiration for a number of artists from romanticists to modernists. One of them is Pavel Nesleha, a Czech painter and visual artist, present professor at University of Decorative Arts in Prague. He tried to catch the fascinating interconnection between the art and nature in his series of manually colored photographs. This experience is going to be intensified by a concert of baroque music, which belongs inseparably to Czech Baroque.
Finally, I would like to thank all, who contributed to the implementation of this gala evening, especially His Excellency Mr. Ambassador and permanent representative of the Czech Republic in UN and the representatives of World Monument Fund, the activities of which help a lot to preserve this endangered jewel of Czech Baroque.
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