Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.17018/portal.2014.8
Wall Paintings in the Sanctuary of the Parish Church of St. Anthony the Hermit in Slavetić: a Contribution to the Study of the Work of Painter Antun Archer
Jasmina Nestić
orcid.org/0000-0001-5063-4456
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Odsjek za povijest umjetnosti, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
For the celebration of the 350 years of the parish in Slavetić, in 2011, the conservation work was completed on the wall paintings in the sanctuary of the parish church of St. Anthony the Hermit. All painted layers post-dating the original one were removed from the walls, presenting the illusionistic paintings that include the painted retable of the main altar. It has a simple architectural scheme, with a pair of columns visually flanking the tabernacle altar that stands on a built mensa, while its high attic is occupied entirely by the illusionistic depiction of St. Anthony the Hermit. The painted retable forms a distinctly harmonious whole with the wooden tabernacle altar that, as archival records tell us, originated in 1791. We can therefore assume that the painted retable, as well as the complete wall paintings of the sanctuary into which this altar composition was fitted, originated around 1791 or certainly within the last decade of the 18th century.
The illusionistic paintings cover all wall surfaces of the sanctuary, optically altering the actual architecture by enlarging, elevating and perforating the space. On the side walls of the sanctuary, an architectural structure of fluted half-columns, walls and cornice is painted, topped by the low illusionistic architecture of the vault zone that opens widely to the heavenly landscape with the depiction of St. Anthony of Padua and the Most Holy Trinity. The style characteristics of these paintings, especially the features of the illusionistic architecture and the figures, indicate that their author is painter Antun Archer, possibly aided by a collaborator or the workshop. More specifically, the wall paintings are in some portions very reminiscent of those in the parish church of St. John the Baptist in Zagreb (in the sanctuary and the Holy Cross Chapel) and the parish church of St. Nicholas in Hraščina, which date from the same period as the wall paintings in Slavetić and are partially attributed to Archer. He is known to have been active in Zagreb from at least the 1780s until his death (before 1808), and we can assume that he collaborated closely with the Styrian painter Anton Jožef Lerchinger on certain wall paintings in the churches of northwestern Croatia. The Slavetić wall paintings were probably commissioned by the Oršić family, who had the church (initially a chapel) erected on their estate, and were the chief patrons of the parish at the time the wall paintings originated. The same family chose the painted medium for the altar retables in their private chapels in Gornja Bistra and Gornja Stubica, which are attributed to Lerchinger, i.e. his workshop. This concurrence may indicate that the family was encouraged to also commission a painted altar for the Slavetić church and to hire Archer as Lerchinger’s collaborator.
The wall paintings in the parish church in Slavetić have over time been overpainted on several occasions, first with a new painted architectural structure (1929), and later with monochrome coatings. The 1929 overpaint was applied during a major renovation of the church, when painter and restorer Zvonimir Wyroubal was paid for multiple tasks, among those the execution of five fresco paintings. The nowadays presented wall paintings and the specific altar arrangement in the sanctuary of the church in Slavetić stand at the endpoint of a kind of timeline of similarly painted churches that appeared within the Croatian art heritage of the 18th century, and are viewed as a branch of the widespread artistic fashion, also contemporary to the wider Central-European region.
Ključne riječi
parish church of St. Anthony the Hermit; Slavetić; wall painting; illusionistic retable; Antun Archer; 18th century
Hrčak ID:
133051
URI
Datum izdavanja:
22.12.2014.
Posjeta: 1.812 *