Visitation of the Virgin Mary (Rettenbach)
The Roman Catholic branch church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary is a baroque hall church in the Rettenbach district of Deggendorf in the Deggendorf district in Lower Bavaria . It belongs to the parish Michaelsbuch in the deanery Deggendorf-Plattling of the diocese of Regensburg .
History and architecture
The church in Rettenbach was rebuilt between 1754 and 1758 according to plans by Georg Felix Hirschstetter the Younger from Landshut . The ceiling paintings were made in 1788/1789 by the court painter Thomas Christian Wink . A renovation was carried out between 1990 and 1993; the excavations carried out in the process revealed indications of at least two previous structures. There was a small regional pilgrimage in Rettenbach , especially for the area around Plattling .
The stately church is a little higher up in a walled cemetery. The short nave with rounded corners and the slightly retracted choir on a cross-oval floor plan are under one roof. In the west is the square west tower with a classicist dome . The building is uniformly structured on the outside with Tuscan pilasters and beams. On the west side, including the lower part of the tower, the pilasters lie on a grooved base.
Inside, the church as a short rectangular hall to four yokes with lunette ton trained. The design of the choir as a transversely oval domed room of roughly the same height and width as the nave is unconventional. It opens in a wide arch to the hall, the corners of which are rounded. In the nave , the wall is structured with curved wall templates with triple pilasters and high entablature pieces; in the choir the structure is continued with simple pilasters and continuous entablature. The two parts of the room are brightly lit by large windows with double arches. A double gallery is built in to the west .
For financial reasons it took three decades for the church to be decorated with stucco and paintings. Then the frescoes in the style of the emerging classicism were fitted into the late baroque room, which was made easier by the large vaulted areas in the choir and in the nave. No stucco work was carried out, only indicated by the painter. In the 19th century this painting was felt to be too economical and was therefore overlaid with a small-scale decoration, of which the carved capitals are still preserved today. The remaining ingredients from the 19th century were removed again in 1941 and the frescoes that had been painted over were exposed.
The frescoes were executed by Wink in 1789, as shown by Wink's signature with the year 1789 above the west gallery. They are among the main works of the Munich court painter and form a characteristic example of the post-bloom of late Baroque monumental painting in southern Germany. The Annunciation is shown in the choir. At the edge of the picture, stairs and a palace backdrop are shown as an illusionistic frame into which heaven breaks with God the Father , the dove of the Holy Spirit and angels. At the edge of the vault there is an illusionistic balustrade that is strictly fielded and decorated with festoons . The regular picture fields show scenes from the life of Mary in ocher on a pink background.
The nave fresco is well preserved except for bullet holes from the Second World War and depicts the Assumption of Mary into heaven , who intercedes for humanity. On the eastern edge of the picture there is an altar in a fantastic temple architecture , in front of which the prayers of the faithful rise to heaven, which is symbolized by incense . Personifications of the continents can also be found among the worshipers. On the side pilgrims are depicted with sick people who hope for a miracle healing. These parts of the fresco are detailed in the manner of genre painting with an idyllic characterization of the landscape. The theme of the intercession of saints that echoes in it is expanded to include a representation of all saints huddled on the edge of a cloud funnel. Adam and Eve are depicted between the representatives of the Old and New Covenants , immediately above the altar, which shows a picture of the sacrifice of Isaac .
The paintings are comparable to the one in the nearby Loh pilgrimage church . In the work in Rettenbach, which was created ten years later, however, a recognizable change in style towards the emerging classicism becomes clear. Despite all the virtuosity of the perspective image design, the illusion of a heavenly vault is no longer in the foreground. The image composition is clear and easy to understand with an almost symmetrical arrangement of the figures. The coloring lives from the finest nuances. The incarnates and robes are obtained from the fine refractions of a light basic scale made of silver-gray and gold ocher. The area of the stitch caps is divided into fields and shows bright monochrome images of the evangelists in cartouches .
Furnishing
The high altar is a work from 1760 by Christian Jorhan the Elder . The flat canopy is fitted with the columns and beams into the wall structure of the choir. The flat altar extension is designed as a frame of the glory of rays around the dove of the Holy Spirit. The life-size carved figures of Saints Joachim and Anna, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist are of particular artistic value. Also noteworthy is the older painting of the Visitation of the Virgin, which was created in 1683 by the Landshut court painter Franz Joseph Geiger.
The side altars in the choir arch niches were created by Joseph Deutschmann around 1760 . Carved figures of saints Wendelin and Isidore, close to life, are placed on the southern altar. The altar sheet from 1865 shows Saint Sebastian by Anton Bernreiter from Munich. The north altar shows a painting of Saint Urban in front of the crucifix, which was created in 1789 after a signature by Thomas Christian Wink. The organ is a work by Anton Staller from 1993 with nine stops on a manual and pedal .
literature
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments. Bavaria II - Lower Bavaria. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03122-7 . Pp. 579-581.
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 48 ′ 38.8 ″ N , 12 ° 53 ′ 24 ″ E