Johann Lucas Kracker: új kutatási eredmények
Authors: Jávor Anna 
Published: March 2022

The study surveys the investigations carried out since the publication of the author’s Kracker monograph (Budapest, 2004, in German 2005), and rectifies certain data and the oeuvre catalogue in the book at several loci. New findings are mainly contributed by the Czech Republic: Václav Mílek and Tomáš Valeš explored archival data in Nová Riše and Znojmo, which add to the currently elaborated register entries studied in Vienna and to a lesser extent in Jászó (Jasov, SK). The latter shed light on the network of social relations of the known family of artists, and lead – by virtue of Johann Lucas Kracker’s sculptor father and sculptor stepfather – from Johann Lucas Hildebrandt via relatives employed in the court to the circle of the provincial chief architect Franz Anton Pilgram. The painter got married in Znojmo in the summer of 1749, where he settled, presumably helped by his painter brother-in-law many years his senior, Dominic Clausner; perhaps it was he who mediated him to the Premonstratensians. Based on archival data, Tomáš Valeš attributed two upper pictures of the Capuchine high altar to Franz Xaver Karl Palko from among so-far defined Znojmo works of Kracker, while Petr Arijčuk has discovered several ensembles of paintings convincingly attributed to Kracker in the Moravian region. These works display the strong influence of Paul Troger.

The Pauline church of pilgrimage at Sasvár (Šaštin, SK) was renovated by favour of the Habsburgs; its fresco decoration was entrusted to Viennese court artists: the figure painter of the composition signed by Joseph Chamant was Joseph Ignaz Mildorfer. In the summer of 1757 Kracker delivered two (signed) altar pictures for the pair of chapels in the middle and, in my view – contradicting somewhat the Mildorfer monograph – decorated their lateral walls in grisaille and on the ceilings of the first pair from the sanctuary he painted frescoes of hovering angels. Portraits by Kracker are also known from this period: the imaginary portrait of King of Hungary Béla IV, preserved by the Fáy family since the suppression of the Premonstratensian monastery in Jászó, has recently been identified by researcher of the family genealogy Tünde Fáy. A fine bust of a Moravian noblewoman signed in 1751 has cropped up in Rome’s art trade.

Kracker arrived in Eger from Jászó in the autumn of 1764, only for an occasion. His first job was to decorate the bishop’s private chapel in Eger: the fresco of the resurrected Christ perished in the 19th century. Its only visual trace is a water colour copy signed in 1816 and inscribed by Franz Hauptmann, which was rediscovered after long latency and put on display in 2017 by Petra Köves-Kárai. In 1767 Kracker was working for the Premonstratensians in Geras again from Znojmo: in that year he signed the fresco of the parish church of nearby Japons and decorated that votive chapel at Elsern (the frescoes of the latter perished during reconstructions). Sharing the opinion of Wilhelm Georg Rizzi, the book of 2004 disputed that the presbytery ceiling of Japons was Kracker’s work and thus it was included as the work of Paul Troger in the monograph of the Tirolean painter published in 2012. However, the sources published by Rizzi in 2011 are not convincing enough; the homogeneity of the decoration suggests the authorship of Kracker in all four bays, I think.

The largest increment has been added to Kracker’s graphic oeuvre. Thanks to Tamás Szabó, we know increasingly more of the historical provenance of the Szeged collection of drawings, including the key role of a Szeged painter Ferenc Joó’s studies in Eger. He also directed attention to Joó’s friend from Tiszafüred, painter and graphic artist Menyhért Gábriel who also studied in Vienna and copied works in the archiepiscopal gallery in Eger, and to his estate in Debrecen. That latter contains 144 sheets. Amidst the engravings and 19th century drawings the baroque drawings clearly emerge as a separate group, most of which – 12 compositions – proved to be by Kracker. In addition to the first sketch of the Jászó high altar, the St Sophia praedella picture of the St Anne side altar in the Minorite church of Eger can be accurately identified; an Assumption picture is conditionally associated with the high altar picture of 1774 in the parish church of Besztercebánya (Banská Bystrica, SK). No models of the St Augustine and St John Nepumecene drawings are known, and another two sheets together with a sheet in Szeged lead to the altar pictures in the church of Olaszliszka, but they must have been painted after Kracker’s death, in his workshop. A coherent series copied the ceiling fresco of the refectory in the Praemonstratensian monastery of Geras, painted by Troger in 1738. The quality of draughts-manship is outstanding, coming close to the model.

Together with the baroque drawings, some old copperplate engravings also got into the museums of Szeged and Debrecen. It cannot be excluded that they can also be traced to Eger and they might have been pieces of Kracker’s collection. No inventory survives of Kracker’s estate but when his pupil Johann Zirkler died, a great amount of drawings and prints were inventoried which he might have inherited from his master. For lack of concrete correspondences this provenance cannot be proven, but in another way – by defining the graphic antecedents to Kracker works – we have compiled a virtual collection of the painter’s models. The revised catalogue of Johann Lucas Kracker’s drawings is appended to the study.