The village of Lošonec

Church patron: Anna Losonczyová
The construction of a new church and, in fact, of a restored village, is patronized with the name of the noble Anna, born Lošonci (Lossonczy; 1553-1595), who came from this environment. It pays to introduce her and bring her personality closer to us for a while. In 1567 or 1568, Anna Lošonci married Baron Krištof Ungnad von Sonneck (+ 1587), who became a Croatian ban in 1576 and held this important governor's position until 1583. During these long years, Anna Lošonci carefully managed the family property and she raised her only daughter Anna Maria. However, as one of the few women, she also entered the history of Slovak and especially Hungarian love poetry, when she became the poetic muse of the talented Baron Valentín Balaš (1554-1594).
After finishing his work in Croatia, Anna's husband moved with his family to a new family manor in Chtelnice, where the only daughter of Anna Maria (1569–1611) was married to Baron Tomáš Erdődy (1558–1624) in January 1584. he later became (like his father-in-law and once before his father) a Croatian ban and became famous for his victories in the battles against the Turks. Anna Lošonci married again after the death of her husband Krištof Ungnad: in 1589 she became the first wife of an ambitious nobleman, Baron Sigismund Forgáč (1559-1621), a later Hungarian palatine. She handed over the entire Smolenice estate (including Lošonec) to her daughter and her husband.

Renaissance appearance of the church from the beginning of the 17th century
Anna Lošonci belonged to a truly handful of Hungarian nobility, which remained in the ranks of the Catholic Church even in the 16th century, at the time of the greatest spread of Protestantism. Her first husband was a convinced Protestant, as was Forgáč at first, but shortly after 1600, under the influence of the missionary activity of the Jesuit and later Archbishop of Esztergom, Petr Pázmaň, he converted to Catholicism.
Anna also remembered her native Lošonec on her deathbed, and part of her financial legacy bequeathed the local parish to the construction of a new brick church with the patronage of St. Anna. The executor of this last will was undoubtedly Anna's daughter, Anna Mária Erdődyová, Smolenice's castle, from about 1600 until her death. The building of that time is actually the main nave of today's church. The floor plan thus had a simple rectangular layout and the exterior a rough, rustic character. Despite the absence of more significant period stylistic features, the building is typically locally renaissance with its pragmatic concept. The western façade with the main entrance and the emporium was dominated by the then simple built-in tower with a square floor plan terminated by a pyramidal roof.
The constant threat of Turkish invasions cannot be forgotten, so at the same time a high stone wall was built around the church, which was to fulfill a defensive function if necessary.

Baroque reconstructions and equipment of the church between 1714 and 1753
We do not know the original form of the presbytery (shrine) of the temple. Today's polygonal closure of the presbytery, vaulted with a barrel lunette vault with ridges, is only the result of the first Baroque reconstruction from 1714.
The current disposition of the Greek (isosceles) cross was given to the church in 1753 by the addition of both side chapels. Both, like the presbytery, end in a polygonal enclosure and are vaulted with cross ridge vaults. A secondary side entrance was later built in one of them. A sacristy with an entrance from the interior was also connected from the northeast.
Around 1729, the presbytery began to be built. Work on the Baroque interior of the church was completed in 1753, so in this time horizon the interior of the church was gradually added. To this day, for example, a wooden pulpit has been preserved, showing the features of the already delayed vault ornamentation and at the same time elements of the current High Baroque: especially the lambrekine curtain of the canopy of this pulpit. Two pairs of statues of the holy Hungarian kings, located today above the altars of the side chapels, date from the period and probably also from the same local carving workshop. However, they are rather characterized by a rather rustic sculptural figurative canon, only weakly marked by the culminating Baroque.
It can be assumed that around 1750 a new main altar was ordered, which served until the beginning of the 20th century. Unfortunately, its overall appearance is not known to us: so far we do not know of any old photographs or cartoon sketches on which it would be captured. Certainly there was a "classical" Baroque altar canteen with a tabernacle extension, in which the honorary central place belonged to the statue of St. Anny, who, unfortunately, did not survive. However, it appears that it was surrounded on the sides of the altar by polychrome wooden statues of at least two holy Hungarian kings and earthly patrons: St. Stefan and Ladislav.

One of them - although only a torsion of the original matter - survived by a happy coincidence. It is not possible to determine whether it belonged to the highest or lowest statues on the altar, or whether all the statues were of similar size. The preserved statue of the Holy King is originally also painted and gilded (polychrome) wood carving with a height of about 126 cm, including a carved base. The width of the statue is in the middle, at the incoming drapery, a maximum of 46 cm. It is designed as a single-sided, with a hollowed-out rear trough, so its depth does not exceed 32 cm. It was made compactly from a single piece of linden wood, with the exception of separately cut and fixed hands, which were damaged and lost over time after the altar was removed. retained.
The missing hands of the holy king are the reason that we also have no attributes, ie iconographic elements that allow us to identify a specific figure of the saint. Most likely, St. Stephen, the Hungarian king and provincial patron, or his usual altar "counterpart" - a little later the reigning Hungarian king, St. Ladislav.
From the artistic-historical point of view, it is really a great positive that the work can be classified not only in time but also in terms of authorship. Since the work on the furnishing of the sanctuary of the church was completed in 1753, this can be considered a borderline for the creation of altar sculptures. The authorship can be attributed by analogy to the nameless sculptor from the Trnava region, or probably directly from Trnava, who also created sculptures for a nearby church in Kaplná at about the same time.
The woodcarvings from Kaplná also represent the holy Hungarian kings as provincial patrons: Saints Stephen and Ladislav, but in addition to them, the former central patron saint of the chapel church - Ján Krstiteľ - has also been preserved. All three mentioned statues from the former baroque altar in Kaplná have been the property of the SNG in Bratislava since 1971 (inv. No. P - 1414, 1415 and 1416).

Lošonec woodcarving shows almost the same dimensions as the chapels. The technological moments of the carving work (eg similarly sharp troughs "trough" on the backs of the statues) and the formal-style elements of the sculptor's handwriting are identical: which is almost the same (and perhaps in the case of Lošonec even more precise) plastic carving, equally dynamically wavy coat drapery with fur cape, identical royal crowns and especially very similar physiognomic features.
Apparently, these statues were created on the main altar in Lošonec in the workshop of a master carver from Trnava. The Hungarian saints from the right side altar in the church of St. John the Baptist can be considered a relatively close analogy among the altars parallel in time within the Trnava churches. James, which is a Franciscan church.

The last significant modifications in the interior of the church at the beginning of the 20th century
Finally, at the beginning of the 20th century, a new altar with a central sculpture in an open niche in a tabernacle extension was placed in the temple sanctuary. The sculpture represents the patron saint of the church - St. Anna with her little daughter Maria. The author of this sculpture created other statues of saints for the altars in the side chapels, which must not be missing in any Roman Catholic church: St. Joseph and St. Anton of Padua. The altar itself was made in the neo-Renaissance style in the spirit of historicist and eclectic tendencies, while the responses of the Rococo are also evident in the ornamental wood carving and the overall color scheme. This suggests a rocaille-shaped antemion above the rococo-wavy axially symmetrically composed volutes forming the ledge of the tabernacle. The altar canteen is decorated with flat square fields with circular medallions, in which the half-figures of St. Joseph, St. John the Baptist and (apparently) St. Nicholas. My student Stanka Cepková is currently undergoing a diploma research, which identifies and documents the altar work of the Hlohovec sculptor, carver and creator of altars (not only) in the Trnava region - Jozef Seilnacht (active in 1905-1939). The initial information that this carver also worked on the altar in Smolenice has not been confirmed, but based on a stylistic-critical analysis, the work of the mentioned master appears to be the current Lošonec altar. So far, it is not possible to substantiate these hypotheses with archival sources.
The ceiling fresco decoration was also created in the 1920s or 1930s. The painting in an intricate quadrilateral stucco framing represents the Lord Jesus as a friend of the children and is situated between two opposite lunettes in the presbytery so that it is precisely in front of the school's companion visitors.