An Unknown Architectural Drawing from the Workshop of Peter Parler

The lecture will present a parchment sheet with a presumed sketch of the canopy tomb of Pope Innocent VI from the Charterhouse in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. In 1635, it was reused to bind a book belonging to the brotherhood of journeymen of the potters guild in Kłodzko (German: Glatz, now in Poland). The main thesis of the lecture is that the parchment originates from the cathedral workshop in Prague, led at that time by Peter Parler, and that the simplified, yet proportionally accurate depiction of the longitudinal elevation of the Avignon tombstone attests to the lively artistic and political contacts between the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia during the reign of Charles IV of Luxembourg and the Provençal seat of the Roman Curia during the Avignon papacy. The lecture will demonstrate the significance of the Kłodzko drawing in understanding the processes of long-distance artistic transfer and the development of the Gothic style in fourteenth-century Europe.