High altar of St. Stephen's Cathedral

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High altar in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna
Prince-Bishop Breuner's coat of arms on the base of the altar

The high altar of the Cathedral and Metropolitan Church of St. Stephan in Vienna is an early Baroque masterpiece made of marble and stone. The altar is decorated with sculptures , resembles a house portal in its structure, and is therefore a Porta Coelis altar. The theme is the stoning of St. Stephen, the namesake of the cathedral. The altar is a major work of Johann Jacob Pock , master stonemason, sculptor and architect and his brother, the painter Tobias Pock .

history

Prince-Bishop Philipp Friedrich Graf Breuner began the Baroque transformation in St. Stephen's Cathedral in 1639 ; his first master builder was Simon Humpeller , followed by Hans Herstorffer in 1641 . Since the wood-carved Gothic winged altar was already completely eaten away by the wood worm , on March 1, 1641, he commissioned the master stonemason and sculptor Johann Jacob Pock to erect the new high altar . In the contract, the completion in 1645 was fixed and explicit reference was made to the Roman architecture of Giacomo da Vignola , but northern Italian Jesuit models dominate due to the strong contrast between light and dark .

It is noteworthy that an external stonemason sculptor was brought to Vienna for this important commission. No local artist was able to compete successfully, and St. Stephen's Cathedral was taboo for Italian-Swiss artists.

Payments on account were made from August 12, 1640 to March 2, 1647. Pock had been guilty of exceeding the deadline, which led to sharp additions to his contract on June 18, 1646, ... to let his person be seized, in arrest and all of it to request any costs incurred to ime or his own. The total cost of the altar, written on the back of the contract, was 21,500  fl.

The work, created on tin plates (28 square meters), shows the stoning of St. Stephen, in the background a crowd can be seen in which other saints are represented - an indication of the patronage of All Saints. Its structure resembles a house portal, which is why it is a Porta Coelis altar. The cafeteria plate of red Adnet marble ( "Lienbacher") is notable only by its size and has two baluster supports of Polish marble with white stone of Eggenburg was highlighted. For two massive lateral pillars , deliveries were made from a quarry in the Hohentauern , a magnesite stone , which was then called marble, ... black and white embossed Steyrian or Klagenfurt marbel stone . The nine figures, the capitals , cartouches etc. are made of Sterzing marble. A peculiarity of this marble is that it takes on a yellowish color over time, also indoors. This can also be seen at the high altar. In 1645 Pock employed six journeymen .

Of the lower statues, the two inner ones represent the hll. Patrons of the country Leopold and Florian , the outer ones the plague patrons Sebastian and Rochus . The organizers of early Christianity , the holy bishops Rupert and Bonifatius , were chosen as the gable figures . The crowning conclusion is the figure of the Mother of God.

Hans Jacob Pock himself selected the required marble from the quarry near Sterzing in Tyrol and entrusted Martin Zwölfer, bricklayer in Sterzing, with the dismantling in 1641. He did not meet his obligation in time, so that in 1642 Pock drove again to Sterzing with great effort and heavy expenses , in vain. Finally, he turned to his client, Prince Bishop Breuner, for help, but part of the delivery in 1665 was still outstanding.

Lower statues of the high altar

  • St. Sebastian

  • St. Leopold

  • St. Florian

  • St. Rochus

literature

Web links

Commons : High altar of St. Stephen's Cathedral  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Treaty of 1641 with Prince-Bishop Breuner
  2. ^ "City of Vienna: St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna"

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 29.8 ″  N , 16 ° 22 ′ 24.9 ″  E