In 1698, the Freising prince-bishop Johann Franz Eckher von Kapfing and Liechteneck commissioned the Austrian painter Valentin Gappnigg to paint the monastery’s possessions for the princely walk between the residence and Mariendom. Gappnig traveled the lands with brush and easel, including Hollenstein/Ybbs, Göstling/Ybbs, Randegg, Waidhofen and Ulmerfeld (municipality of Amstetten) and created 32 paintings. The pictures in this cycle are the starting point of a transnational EU-Leader project in Lower Austria. Eisenstrasse and the central Isar region in Bavaria.
In a traveling exhibition and “windows of time”, the respective landscapes, which Gappnig painted in great detail, are contrasted with today’s heavily overdeveloped and sealed habitat. The view from back then at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries and from the present is intended to show the extent of landscape consumption, as project manager Stefan Hackl says: “This experience should be made tangible both digitally and analogously.”
As part of the project, the Waidhofen-born composer Walter Mair makes the transformation and construction audible with “audio landscapes”, which the Waidhofen Chamber Orchestra has recently recorded in the Plenkersaal. The discussion of the use of landscape in the Mostviertel and in the district of Freising should not only be conveyed in traveling exhibitions, but symposia will also be held in the project period up to 2024 and excursions by train and bicycle will be made to those places that Gappnigg with the brush in hand had in mind. A gleaning of the documentation is also available on the Internet.
Source: Nachrichten
