Preliminary communication
Origin of the altars of St. Mar y Magdalene and St. Roch in St. Peter's chapel at Gotalovec
Martina Wolff Zubović
; Croatian Conservation Institute, Section for Movable Heritage Conservation, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The altars of St. Mary Magdalene and St. Roch arrived at the chapel of St. Peter at Gotalovec in the middle of the 18th century, due to a range of unforeseen circumstances. In 1755 the chapel was struck by lightning and burnt down entirely. In the period between 1755 and 1758, Stjepan Putz, chief canon of the Zagreb cathedral, had it reconstructed at his own expense. The chapel inventory was renovated, in that the main altar and the pulpit were built anew, while for the side altars Putz acquired the old retables. Although it is obvious that the old retables were redone, their main architectural, sculptural and ornamental features indicate undoubtedly that they belong to a group of altars dating from the last ffth of the 17th century, attributed to the sculptor Ivan Komersteiner and his workshop. Stjepan Putz probably decided to put them in the chapel as counterparts, given the similar features that they share as works of the same author. Although in his visitation of 1758 he described the chapel renovation in detail, Stjepan Putz made no mention of where the altars had been acquired. Since a number of old wooden altars were replaced by new ones during the period in which he held the position of the cathedral’s chief canon (1728–1771), speculations about the origin of the Gotalovec altars are generally linked to the previous cathedral altars, which were created at the time of Ivan Komersteiner. Some such assumptions call for revision. An analysis of literature and archival sources has brought us to the conclusion that the altars of the Holy Cross and Holy Trinity are not in the picture, because they were built not in 1683, but rather in 1663. The assumption that the Gotalovec altars are atticas of some much more monumental altars is dubious, and in the case of the altar of St. Mary Magdalene it cannot be supported. The reason for this lies in the fact that the minute engravings in the frame of the altar pala, which include four aediculae with small figures of saints, would be completely invisible to the observers if placed any higher. In addition, the altar’s predella ends in a vaulted console, which is not typical of atticas. As far as the altar of St. Roch is concerned, our assumption is that it used to be the small altar of the Church of the Epiphany, erected at the time of bishop Aleksandar Mikulić. Given that the time of ofce of bishop Aleksandar Mikulić (1688–1694) corresponds to the period of activity of Ivan Komersteiner and his workshop, there is a possibility that the small altar was ordered from him. The altar with patrocinium of the Church of the Epiphany could have a pala with a representation of the Adoration of the Magi, while the sculptures of Hungarian kings placed around the pala and on the attica served as an iconographic supplement to the theme. Upon its arrival in Gotalovec, the old altar pala could have been replaced with the current one, representing the new titular, while the accompanying sculptures of kings remained on the altar. The hypothesis that the cathedral altar of St. Mary Magdalene is a work by Ivan Komersteiner, and that it was transferred to the chapel of St. Peter at Gotalovec at the request of Stjepan Putz, could not be supported by the analysis of archival materials.
Keywords
sculpture; wooden polychrome sculpture; altar; baroque; 17th c.; Gotalovec; Zagreb; Ivan Komersteiner; Stjepan Putz
Hrčak ID:
103587
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2010.
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