Adatok Johann Jacob Khün „érseki udvari festő” működéséhez, Lippay György pozsonyi nyaralókastélyának újonnan előkerült keleti látképe (1663) kapcsán

Abstract

Archbishop of Esztergom György Lippay’s (1600–1666) summer residence and garden in Pozsony were represented on a series of engravings published in 1663. A hitherto unknown piece of this series features the eastern view of the residence (Bibliotheca Ecclesiae Metropolitanae Strigoniensis, Esztergom; fig.). The sheet bears the signature of Johann Jacob Khün, painter to the archbishop who supposedly produced the drawings for the entire series. According to various sources most of which were concluded by Klára Garas, Khün came from a family of over four generations of painters and sculptors originated in Besztercebánya. The present study attempts to uncover documents representing Khün’s family relations and personal connections in the milieu of the archbishop’s court at Pressburg. Only a few sources remain on Johann Jacob Khün’s work in archbishop Lippay’s service. Based on a few miscellaneous allusions and the painter’s recently recovered letter written to the archbishop’s physician and familiar Polycarpus Procopius Bonannus (d. 1664) in 1659, the author presumes that Khün was the grandson of Jacob Khien the elder (d. after 1619) who created the so-called Zmeskál epitaph (Berzevice, c. 1600). Johann Jacob Khün’s father was probably the painter Jacob Khien the younger who became a burgess of Besztercebánya in 1619. Pozsony sculptor Johann Christoph Khien (d. 1696/97), creator of the Holy Trinity column of Nagyszombat (1683–1695), and Ferdinand Khien, a doctor born in Besztercebánya who graduated at the University of Wittenberg (1667) and later worked in Eperjes and Pozsony were probably Johann Jacob Khün’s brothers. Judging by the 1659 letter and other sources, Khün’s brother Ferdinand may well have been helped with the starting of his medical career by Bonannus who probably interceeded for him to spend his pharmacist’s training in Johann Weber’s (1612–1684) pharmacy in Eperjes. Khün’s letter implies that he may well have produced illustrations for Bonannus’s ambitious but ultimately unpublished and lost opus describing Hungary’s geographical and mineralogical treasures, entitled De admirandis Hungariae rebus, backed by archbishop Lippay and Lord Chief Justice Ferenc Nádasdy (1623–1671). The correspondence of Bonannus, a rare group of sources, provides some important data to the project and Khün’s surmized participation, and might as well lead to closer acquaintance with the process of furnishing and decorating of archbishop György Lippay’s summer residence and garden of Pozsony. A year after the publishing of the print series Khün already worked as a court painter to Count (later Palatine and Prince) Pál Esterházy (1635–1713). Between 1664 and 1671 he produced at least eight paintings for him, and decorated sixteen rooms of his Kismarton Castle.