Prethodno priopćenje
https://doi.org/10.17018/portal.2024.9
Collection of Sacral Art of the parish church of St Blaise in Vodnjan: a contribution to the knowledge of the typology of reliquaries
Matea Jerman
orcid.org/0000-0003-3980-5079
; Ministarstvo kulture i medija RH, Konzervatorski odjel u Rijeci
Sažetak
The Collection of Sacral Art has been exhibited in the parish church of St Blaise in Vodnjan since 1984. Most of the works of art on display came from the collection of the Venetian painter and collector Gaetan Grezler (c. 1764–1846), who moved to Vodnjan in 1818. In addition to numerous paintings, statues and altar sculptures, Grezler had several mummified bodies of saints, and over a hundred reliquaries and various holy powers from Venetian churches. Today, the Collection of Sacral Art exhibits eighty-seven reliquaries: glass, metal and wooden reliquaries with almost three hundred relics of various saints. In the past, authors have dealt mostly with reliquaries made of precious metals, due to their typological diversity and time of creation. However, the most numerous reliquaries in the Vodnjan collection are those made of glass from the 16th to the 19th century (on the basis of their design and use of decorative motifs). This paper is the first time they have been analysed in the context of glass production on the island of Murano, and compared with examples preserved in Venice, various museums around the world, and church treasuries on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Typologically, the most common reliquaries are those with a cylindrical container for holy powers placed on a circular base with a decorative handle. The container with the relic is closed on the upper side with a conical lid with various decorations such as crosses, stylized flowers and bouquets of multi-coloured flowers. The handle of the reliquary is decorated with a spherical nodus or is made in the form of an elongated vase with vertical or twisted grooves and, in some examples, with several decorative rings. The most splendid examples of glass reliquaries from Vodnjan have mascarons on the nodes, such as the reliquary of St Mary of Clopas, or blue glass balls, which appear most often. The reliquary of St Leo the Bishop with a cylindrical container flanked on both sides by a type of glass crest, is quite a remarkable example. The reliquary of St Christina the Great Martyr, with remains of gilding, is also unique. The diversity of these reliquaries is also determined by the difference in size between their height and the diameter of the base. Variations are also achieved by placing a glass container with a lid made of the same material on a wooden stand. The best example is the reliquary of St Zephyrinus, Pope and Martyr. On the basis of similar examples, most glass reliquaries from Vodnjan can be dated to the 16th and 17th centuries, and reliquaries with a simplified handle without decorative elements are from the 18th and 19th centuries. On the basis of their design, all exhibited glass reliquaries from the Vodnjan collection can be attributed to the glass workshops on the island of Murano. This makes it one of the most important collections of Venetian glass on the eastern coast of the Adriatic and beyond. In the context of goldsmith art preserved on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, the Vodnjan collection includes several very valuable examples of reliquaries made of precious metals, and mostly covered with gilding. According to typology and stylistic characteristics, it is possible to date them between the 14th and 19th centuries. The most valuable are those with relics relating to Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary, which are typologically different and therefore the most interesting. If we look at the technique, they are the work of highly skilled Venetian goldsmiths. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the reliquaries and places them in the broader context of goldsmith production in Venice, using examples from its overseas possessions. The most common type of reliquary made from precious metals features a glass container mounted on a metal stand that includes a handle and base. It is typically covered with a spherical or conical lid, which is often adorned with a decorative element on top, such as a cross, a royal apple, or a figure representing the saint whose relics are held within the container. Two reliquaries from the Vodnjan collection stand out: the reliquary of St Simeon, made during the third quarter of the 16th century in an unknown Venetian goldsmith’s workshop, and the reliquary of St Anthony of Padua, probably made during the same period, by one of the oldest Venetian workshops, called ‘Croze’. The reliquary of St Mary of Egypt from the mid-16th century, with a glass container flanked by two angels, indicates that it was originally intended for relics associated with Jesus Christ. At the end of the 16th century and during the 17th, in the spirit of the post-Tridentine renewal, the shapes of the reliquaries were simplified, and objects with incised geometric forms, a simple apple-shaped nodus, shallowly stamped floral decorations on circular bases and lids of the reliquaries appear more often. Several Vodnjan reliquaries belong to this group: the reliquaries of St Otto the Franciscan Martyr, a set of four gilded copper reliquaries with relics of numerous saints, the reliquary of St Lawrence and the one with the remains of St Fusca of Ravenna. The last two were donated to the parish church in Vodnjan in 1732 by Ivan Zanini, and they were probably the only ones not part of Grezler’s collection. A typologically distinct group includes four silver reliquaries that look like two-dimensional relief-shaped pointers placed on wooden bases, and they were made in the second half of the 18th century. In the absence of funding from a client, reliquaries made of wood were also procured for sacred relics. They often imitated the appearance of those made of precious metals. Among the numerous examples from Vodnjan, the reliquaries of St Timothy and St Fabian the Martyr, or the reliquary of soldiers crucified on Mount Ararat, are worth highlighting. However, the collection also includes several wooden reliquaries with rocaille decorative elements made in the form of chests with a built-in glass partition at the front. They include the reliquaries of St Lucy, St Pacificus the Martyr, St Priscius the Martyr and St Justina the Martyr. The diversity of the preserved reliquaries makes the Collection of Sacral Art at the parish church of St Blaise stand out from the collections available to the public on the eastern coast of the Adriatic.
Ključne riječi
glass reliquaries; precious-metal reliquaries; wooden reliquaries; parish church of St Blaise in Vodnjan; Gaetano Grezler, Murano, Venice
Hrčak ID:
325624
URI
Datum izdavanja:
19.12.2024.
Posjeta: 22 *