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.
The author presents the story of the import of marble and limestone from the southern provinces of the Netherlands and their applying in small-scale architecture and stone sculpture created on so-called Polish lands from the Middle Ages to the second half of the 18th century. He discusses the types of imported stones, methods of their distribution, as well as the significance of these imports for art created on Polish lands. The article is provided with an appendix containing a list of architectural and sculptural works made of marble and limestone from the southern provinces of the Netherlands in the former Polish Republic and neighbouring countries in 14th – 18th centuries.
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