EN
Located in the central part of former Lesser Poland, Chęciny, near Cracow, constituted in the 1 st half of the 17 th century the third after Cracow and Gdansk sculptural and stonemason centre whose impact and influence covered almost the whole territory of the Kingdom of Poland. The Author based his investigation on the entries to be found in the 17 th -century Chęciny town records, Cracow central court files and those of the Kurzelów Judicial Vicarage in the Gniezno Archdiocese. He assumed that prior to 1608-14 both representatives of that south-western Tyrolean sculptor family of Venosta established in Chęciny a workshop flourishing until 1639, while their outstanding accomplishments spread the centre’ fame throughout the whole Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Such an impressive output, counted in tens of executed works, as well as an unprecedented vast territory of their activity, comparable only with the territory of the influence of the concurrently active sculpture-masonry and construction shop of the Flemish Willem and Abraham van den Block operating in Hanseatic Gdansk, places the Venosta Chęciny workshop among the most important sculpture workshops of the modern era in the Crown territories.