Osječki zbornik, Vol. Vol. 28 No. xx, 2007.
Original scientific paper
Iconologic interpretation of Pejačević chapel in Našice
Daniel Zec
Abstract
The Pejačević chapel in Našice, by architect Hermann Bollé, should certainly be included in a group of most prominent examples of sacral architecture of the Historicist style in Slavonia. This paper attempts to analyse its structure, architectural decoration and interior furnishings providing interpretation of its figural and ornamental decoration.
It also presents new discoveries about the erection of the chapel and attribution related to the sculptures of Bollé’s collaborators on his earlier architectural projects.
As one of the most important representatives of Historicism in Croatia, Herman Bollé made plans for this neo-gothic chapel with a vault for the family of count Pejačević in Našice at the beginning of what was to become a rich architectural oeuvre.
The erection of the chapel lasted two years (1880 -1881) and the reason for its construction was a premature death of young count Marko Pejačević, the son of Ladislav Pejačević who became Croatian viceroy in 1880.
The Pejačević chapel has a very interesting, unique and well considered iconographic programme. It is arranged in three individual sculptural groups with different topographical arrangement but interrelated by their messages and meanings. They are represented by vestibule capitals, corbels in the apse and the north-west (entrance) wall of the vault. All decorative architectural sculpture was made of stone and carved with fine craftsmanship.
Sculpturally more demanding and visually more captivating parts of the sculptural ensemble are two groups of sculpture carved in relief. One group is made by the vestibule capitals and the second by the corbels in the apse.
The four vestibule capitals show the four Evangelists and the four apse consoles show a composition of lavish, naturalistically carved poppies. The third sculptural and
iconographic group is placed in the vault bellow the chapel. It comprises reliefs of two sleeping cherubs and a bas-relief in stone showing two Renaissance putti, copies of Rafael’s Sistine Madonna, in a frame that echoes a triumphal arch. It is significant that behind the reliefs the triumphal arch niches hide built in tombs of children from the Pejačević family.
Iconographical content is marked discretely, almost on the borderline between the decorative and symbolic, without the explicitness of the traditional iconography that would otherwise be appropriate for the same topics. The key to interpreting the chapel iconography is the awareness of the context in which all the scenes appear and the context is determined by the funerary function of the building. It is exactly this function that the architectural sculpture iconography in the chapel interior is dependant upon.
While the Evangelist from the chapel vestibule hold their unrolled scrolls and announce and confirm Christian dogma to which alluded in other iconographic groups, the apse corbels with poppy heads symbolise death, that is dream, in this specific context actually the “dream” of the dead. The same iconographic motif was used by Bollé on the Mirogoj arcades. In this sense, especially significant are the scenes depicting sleeping cherubs in the vault: not only are they illustrative of epitaphs on children tombstones, but their dream is, in effect, visual image which in itself integrates the fundamental meaning of the building as a place of “eternal repose” and which directly points to that meaning.
Furthermore, the use the triumphal arch in the vault acquires a meaning which surmounts the sole purpose of shape and decorative and sculptural articulation of the space. The triumphal arch in this context undergoes a transformation from an architectural motif into an iconographic element and takes on a Christian interpretation - eschatological symbolism that was indicated on the apse corbels continues and culminates in the vault -thus making an allusion to the Resurrection.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
160553
URI
Publication date:
5.12.2007.
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