Original scientific paper
A Contribution to the Study of Wall Paintings in the Church of St John of Nepomuk in Stupnik
Tanja Trška Miklošić
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Odsjek za povijest umjetnosti
Abstract
The church of St John of Nepomuk in Stupnik, erected between 1769 and 1772, preserves
a late-Baroque cycle of wall paintings formerly considered the work of Anton
Jožef Lerchinger and Anton Archer, and presently attributed to an unknown painter
from Archer’s circle. The painted cycle was directly inspired by the prints of the German
engraver and printer Johann Andreas Pfeffel (Bishoffi ngen near Altbreisach 1674 – Augsburg 1748), executed as illustrations for the Life of St John of Nepomuk (Nepomucene) written by the Czech Jesuit Bohuslav Balbìn (Hradec Králové 1621 – Prague 1688). The illustrated edition of Balbìn’s Vita S. Joannis Nepomuceni sigilli sacramentalis Protomartyris, published in 1725 and again in 1730 after the saint’s
canonization, represented the source of visual models for numerous artists in Central Europe, and a copy of the famous book was recorded in Stupnik parish library at the time of the execution of wall paintings. The twelve selected episodes from the life of St John of Nepomuk depicted in painted medallions on the vaults do not include one of the most important scenes of his iconography – St John of Nepomuk Thrown from the Bridge. The said scene, of much larger dimensions than the ones in vault medallions, was once painted on the north wall of the chancel. The composition of the chancel wall painting executed in 1882 (which probably substituted an earlier painting of the same subject) is revealed by the manuscript notes of Anđela Horvat and old photographs. The use of book illustration – probably due to the educated parish priest Josip Šipušić, later a Zagreb canon – whose role in the globalization of images has yet to be fully researched, connects the wall paintings in the parish church in Stupnik with elaborate visual narrations of the saint’s hagiography in Central Europe.
Keywords
Stupnik; St John of Nepomuk; wall painting; iconography; Johann Andreas Pfeffel; Bohuslav Balbìn
Hrčak ID:
188426
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2011.
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