Jávor Anna - Lubomír Slavícek szerk.: Késő barokk impressziók, Franz Anton Maulbertsch (1724-1796) és Josef Winterhalder (1743-1807) (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai)

Tomas Vales: Ifj. Josef Winterhalder (1743-1807), Maulbertsch legkiválóbb freskófestő tanítványa. Fejezetek egy készülő monográfiából - A vég vagy a kezdet?

Winterhalder's oeuvre. The depicted figures are the founders of the monastery and persons related to its history. On the shorter wall opposite the entrance the founder Leo of Klobouk is shown on the left, with his second wife Rejcka (Richza) in the period costume of noble women next to him. The two figures correspond perfectly to the surviving sketches drawn for the fresco. The third figure connected to the monastery, Bohuslav Morkowsky of Zastrizl is depicted on the wall in mirror inversion, opposite the couple. Next to him is his wife, Susanne Liboria. In the illusory niches of the longer wall four rulers : Ottokár I Pfemysl, Matthias Corvinus, Maria Theresa and Joseph II are shown. The presence of the latter two is not only a sign of loyalty but also refers to the certification of the essential documents of the monastery - in the years preceding the suppression of the orders. Probably before the leave of abbot Matuschka was the decoration of the first-floor great refectory of the Premonstratensians in Kftiny/Kiritein begun. No longer extant, the fresco perpetuated the settling of the Premonstratensians in Zábrdovice. Above the door the scene of the destruction of the convent during the Hussite wars was added. Later Winterhalder was again contracted by the same order, now to decorate the interior of the Assumption of the Virgin abbey in Zábrdovice. This commission has a key role in Winterhalder's oeuvre as the watershed between his rococo frescoes with a luxuriance of pastel colours and the more reserved works closer to the neo-classical taste. The theme is divided into three fields, two of them conceived as ceiling pictures in architectonic frames. The program was summed up by Winterhalder in his list of works dated 1796. The first, massively re-painted fresco above the emporium shows Mary with folded hands triumphing over sin, surrounded by angels. On the ceiling of the nave Maria Immaculata is shown as the Triumphant Virgin as Second Eve who defeats sin. Mary's head is surrounded by twelve stars; she is standing on a celestial sphere and treads with her right foot on the throat of the serpent grabbing the apple of the fall. The Infant Jesus standing next to her is about to stab his cross-shaped lance into the snake. The cult of the Triumphant Virgin goes back to after the victorious battle of Lepanto over the Ottomans, when Mary began to be worshipped as the symbol of victory over heresy. The Immaculata theme of the interior is complemented by two altar paintings in side chapels : Anna teaching Mary to read and Annunciation of the birth of Mary to Joachim. Several studies for the latter are known. The Virgin in the middle of the vault is surrounded by Biblical figures. Lower left, figures from the Old Testament - Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, Moses, King David, Noah with the olive branch, Gideon and Aaron - opposite to them Elisabeth with the infant St. John the Baptist are depicted. The Christ Child and the Virgin are surrounded by Zacharias, St. Joseph, St. Joachim and St. Anna, and perhaps the resurrected Christ. The whole scene is crowned by the Almighty Father held by angels, with an angel holding a lily and a mirror in his left, alluding to the Immaculate Conception. A preliminary study to this field has recently been found. The Assumption picture of the high altar was painted by Maulbertsch around 1782, in harmony with the iconography of Winterhalder's sanctuary ceiling fresco. In an architectural frame, Christ is shown on a cloud with angels, waiting for the Virgin so that they could occupy the throne in the upper part of the painting. The scene is complemented by angels standing for the nine angelic hosts. Below an angel in the middle is holding a sceptre, lifting Mary's crown from a cushion with the other hand. There are further secular monarchic crowns on the cushion. The basic doctrine of the hierarchy of angels was formulated by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Here single angels represent each host, without the traditional attributes. The angel holding the cushion with the crowns stands for the monarchies, the beings placed second in the Areopagite's hierarchy. Above the group of the three recognizable archangels there is a dominant figure of an angel with iridescent wings, green dress and lilac gown, holding a closed royal crown. Two sketches are known to this part of the fresco: a luxuriously colourful one in Vienna's Belvedere, and one in Lviv/Lemberg, the library of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The latter can be taken for the modello of the painting which contains all the signal elements of the fresco in simplified form. The dating of the completion of the fresco and the separation of Josef Pichler's work from Winterhalder's is not without problems. In the Zábrdovice fresco Winterhalder distinctly archaized, drawing on the works of Paul Troger and his generation. The monarchic implications of the program had political reasons as well: to win Joseph II to support the monastic orders. They failed, as is well known, and the suppression of the monasteries influenced Winterhalder's subsequent career unfavourably. It was presumably Anton Valentin Kaschnitz of Weinberg who introduced the painter to aristocrats bent to the reforms. In addition to minor