Chapel of Saint Wenceslaus, Baroque chapel-shrine in Dvorce, Czech Republic
The Chapel of Saint Wenceslaus is a niche chapel built in 1696 as part of František Antonín Špork's hermitage on the Lysá nad Labem estate. Its present form, with two angel statues of Joyful and Sorrowful Death flanking the niche, dates from after the hermitage was abolished in the 1730s. Other hermitage sculptures were moved to the wall of the Church of St. John the Baptist in Lysá nad Labem.
The niche chapel was built in 1696 as part of a hermitage and so-called miraculous garden with fourteen sculptures, a fountain and a windmill, initiated by František Antonín Špork on the edge of his Lysá nad Labem estate. Its present form, with two angel statues of Joyful and Sorrowful Death, dates from after the hermitage was abolished in the 1730s; other sculptures were moved to the fence wall of the Church of St John the Baptist in Lysá nad Labem.
The two flanking statues personify Joyful and Mournful Death, a pairing added after the hermitage was dissolved in the 1730s; the other hermitage sculptures were moved to the perimeter wall of the Church of St John the Baptist in Lysá nad Labem. Some sources attribute the figures to Matyáš Bernard Braun, though his age would place their carving later.
The chapel stands at the tip of the Dvorce cadastre, on the Lysá nad Labem side of the border with Káraný. Since 1873 the busy Prague–Lysá nad Labem railway has run directly past it; a level-crossing keeper's hut stood here until 1996, and the Káraný waterworks siding, removed in 2007, once joined the line at this point.
The two angel statues flanking the niche, named Joyful and Sorrowful Death, were added only after the hermitage was dissolved in the 1730s; the other sculptures were moved to the perimeter wall of the Church of St John the Baptist in Lysá nad Labem. Some sources attribute the figures to Matyáš Bernard Braun, though his age makes a later date likely.
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