Preliminary communication
The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Glogovnica in the Context of Late-Gothic Vaulting of Two-Nave Hall Churches
Marina Šimunić Buršić
; Arhitektonski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Glogovnica near Križevci is a medieval structure with a single-nave vaulted chancel and congregation space divided by massive pillars into two longitudinal naves. The formal and stylistic characteristics of the pillars, historical sources which mention the Knights Templar in the area of Glogovnica, as well as the two-nave plan, extremely rare in Croatian Gothic
rchitecture, have led art historians to conclude that the church in Glogovnica was constructed in several stages – from Romanesque
to late Gothic. Anđela Horvat sustained the thesis that the entire church in Glogovnica was an unfi nished late-Gothic structure, affi rming that its two-nave, longitudinal, hallchurch designed main body was supposed to be vaulted. In order to re-examine this thesis the author discusses examples of two-nave hall spaces in European Gothic architecture – from two-nave »profane« halls in monastic complexes and early hall churches of the mendicant orders to late-Gothic two-nave churches. Special emphasis is given to their vaulting system, extremely sophisticated in those churches in which the two-nave space is transformed into a three-nave or single-nave layout, thus enabling the architect to create a rich spatial design and demonstrate his skills of elaborate vaulting. The analysis of the vaulting systems of several Central European Gothic two-nave hall churches featuring a narrower single-nave chancel reveals that the diffi cult task of transforming the two-nave space into a single-nave area could be solved in several ways, depending on the skills of the builder and the taste of the patron. Since the patron of the church in Glogovnica was the educated bishop of Zagreb Osvald Thuz, the author proposes the hypothesis that the two-nave longitudinal church body was intended to be vaulted by a late-Gothic vault comprising a decorative rib pattern, and offers several plausible vaulting possibilities.
Keywords
Glogovnica; hall church; two-nave plan; vault; Gothic architecture; Central-European architecture
Hrčak ID:
188396
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2011.
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