Preliminary communication
Gothic Foliate Masks and Other Medieval Bestiary Monsters
Zdenko Balog
; Pučko učilište, Križevci
Abstract
Among the motives of applied architectural ornaments, which from the end of the fourteenth century started reaching Trans-Podravian countries (what is today Slovenia and parts of Croatia) from Europe, we can single out a group of motives that derive from the late Gothic Parlerian synthesis; “foliate mask”, “rascal”, “negroid”, which are in principle found on buildings that carry elements of the Parlerian artistic idiom: Zagreb Cathedral, Pauline Church in Lepoglava,
Parish Church in Hajdina, Church of the Pilgrims in Ptujska Gora, Cartusia Pleterje, Nedelišće, Cirkovljan, but also some buildings further to the south and a group of monuments in continental
Istria, Payin, Čepić, Bočje Polje. There are traces of other artistic idioms which are so densely
intertwined with the fi rst one that literature often doesn’t even recognize them. These are the motives
that belong to the Physiologus of the Late Antiquity Era, which left signifi cant trace in the area of Lower Austria and Upper Styria (Vienna, Neuberg, Rein, Straßengel, Pöllauberg), and can sometimes be noticed in the cross-Drava area (Celje, Nedelišće, Zagreb). The domineering motive is the foliate mask that came to Central Europe from Köln, Schwäbisch-Gmünd, Ulm and Prague in the period between the second half of the fourteenth century and the end of the fi fteenth. Traces can be seen all over Central Europe, all the way down to Pazin in Istria. The foliate mask is an ancient motive which appeared and gained popularity with the architectural ornaments of the Romanesque period. It was most common on the British Islands where it is often termed the “Green Man” (Lady Raglan) and connected to pagan spring traditions.
Although such explanations are attractive, sometimes even fashionable, there exist only hypotheses about it and no factual proofs to back it up.
After observing the group of monuments, we conclude that the appearance of these motives (foliate masks, rascal, negroid) in the fourteenth and fi fteenth century in Medieval Europe was a separate trend, even if it builds upon an iconographic motive known before, because it is separate from a wider context and at one moment linked to the signature style of the workshops that grew from the expansive German construction family Parlera. Their iconographic signifi cance certainly hasn’t been explored enough yet and due to a lack of written sources we may never know what was seen at the time and how numerous foliate masks in churches and monasteries around
Central Europe might be termed.
Keywords
gothic; architectonic plastic; Parler’s; Physiologus; foliage mask; imagination
Hrčak ID:
199531
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2010.
Visits: 1.646 *