Master Pavol of Levoča

This exhibition space is dedicated to the work of Master Pavol of Levoča, the best known Gothic/Renaissance artist in Slovakia. The Slovak National Gallery owns restorers’ copies of his sculptures from the Main Altar of the Parish Church of St. Jacob in Levoča, several castings of reliefs from the same altar, as well as several other sculptures. Three monumental sculptures are the work of the Kotrbovci brothers – a team of Czech restorers who restored the monumental altar in the 1950s. The wooden copies, manually carved almost in 1:1 scale, moreover with polychrome and gold coating according to the period technologies, offer visitors a detailed study of these objects, the originals of which even today are situated in their original place, and thus only hardly accessible to closer view.

The transfers of the wall paintings from the “Zvolen Rectory” (after 1462) are located in the entrance hall to the exposition of Master Pavol of Levoča. Although in this case they are originals of the wall paintings of a townsman’s interior with a cycle typical for “green rooms” alternating between secular and religious themes, the exposition is also interesting from the restoration perspective because the frescos of Zvolen are among the first in our territory which were done with the use of transfer technology (after 1938) – where the layer of plaster is separated from the medium – the wall, and transferred to another wall or construction on a firm pad.