Review article
The Orthodox Church of Saint Elias in Poganovci
Dragan Damjanović
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Odsjek za povijest umjetnosti
Abstract
The church of Saint Elias belongs to a group of valuable and well-preserved religious buildings of Baroque-Classicist features in Slavonia. It is a single-nave church with a façade belfry and a large semi-circular apse. The ground plan is formed as a simplified Latin cross with very short arms, which serve as choirs.
Scarce preserved 18th-century documents reveal that Poganovci did not have a church long after the liberation from the Ottoman rule. The first mention of the intention to build a new church is recorded in archival sources in the years 1783–1784. However, it is fairly certain that the church begun in the said period was not the present-day structure, but rather a smaller wooden church.
The present-day church in Poganovci appears to have been fully erected only in early 1840s, but the building campaign cannot be precisely dated due to the imprecisions in the published contract between the inhabitants of Poganovci and the builder Georg Seufert. The contract, dated 12 March 1843, concerns primarily the construction of the church belfry, but also mentions the roof construction erected on »new walls«. It remains unclear whether this expression refers to an annexed part of the church (the belfry and possibly the choir loft) or to the whole structure. However, it is also possible that the wording of the contract was imprecise, and that the whole church was erected in 1843. The costs of its construction amounted to 2500 florins. In 1913 the church belfry was covered by a new dome, one of the most elaborate Neo-Baroque domes of Historicism in Slavonia.
The furnishings of the church in Poganovci are an example of an almost folk interior, unique for its state of preservation. The church houses numerous valuable examples of arts and crafts: congregation chairs, bishop’s throne, ripidions, candlesticks, liturgical books and so on, as well as numerous icons. Due to the lack of archival records, the dating of the church furnishings can be deduced only on the basis of stylistic features. The present iconostasis, probably executed by Tošo V. Kovačević from Zagreb, was presumably installed in 1905.
Keywords
Poganovci; Baroque Classicism; Historicism; Georg Seufert; Tošo V. Kovačević
Hrčak ID:
136373
URI
Publication date:
17.3.2015.
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