St. Anna Chapel (Passau)
The St. Anna Chapel is a secular church building of the former Franciscan convent in Passau . The sacred building, erected from 1564, was completed in 1588. The Sankt-Anna-Kapelle has been used as an event and exhibition space by the Kunstverein Passau, founded in 1949, since the 1960s .
In terms of art history, the Sankt-Anna-Kapelle is very valuable due to its ceiling frescoes with a unique pictorial program, the beautiful ribbed vault in the chapel and the unique mix of post-Gothic and Renaissance styles . In addition, it is particularly important for the city of Passau, because because of the great city fires in the 17th century, only a few monuments of this type and from this time have been preserved.
Art history
The St. Anna Chapel is one of the most important cultural monuments of Passau because of its mix of post-Gothic and Renaissance styles and the fact that it survived the fire of April 17, 1662 unscathed. The monastery was destroyed in the town fire on July 29, 1680, but the chapel remained largely intact.
More than 50 years after the creation of the last works of art from the late Middle Ages in the late Gothic period, another building was built here, which takes up the Gothic tradition in both plan and elevation and in which the otherwise almost forgotten ribbed vault was rebuilt. In the Sankt-Anna-Kapelle there is a flat longitudinal barrel underlaid with a three-parallel rib vault with parallel ribs and yoke-separating belt arches in single rib width, resulting in an abundance of overlapping inclined ribs and small rhombuses. The ribs no longer support the vault, they are only used for decoration and offer plenty of space for the frescoes. The windows and the outer facade are built in the Renaissance style.
The builder of the monastery complex was most likely Leonhard Uttner, who u. a. worked at the old residence in Passau, and he is also accepted as the builder of the ribbed vaults of the Salvator Church in Passau's Ilzstadt.
Vault paintings
The vault of the chapel is completely painted, and the window reveals also have arabesque paintings - albeit a little later . The paintings in the choir, at the ends of the vaulted yokes and stitch caps represent half-figure round pictures: The apse area shows a Deesis with Christ in the middle, Mary on the left and John the Baptist on the right. The twelve apostles are depicted at the ends of the vaulted yokes, six on each side. Another fourteen people from the Old Testament, including David, Moses, Abraham and Solomon, can be found in the stitch caps.
Usage history
In 1588 the Franciscan monastery in Heiliggeistgasse, begun in 1564 by Prince-Bishop Urban von Trennbach (1561–1598), was completed. In that year, according to the deed of foundation, the monastery built at the expense of the bishop and the monastery was handed over to the Franciscans. In order to gain space for the extensive monastery building, some town houses, including the so-called women's house (= brothel), were demolished. The large monastery church, today's Votive Church at the beginning of the pedestrian zone, was not built until 1613 . Until then, the small St. Anne's Chapel, which was added to the monastery complex, served as the monastery church, and later as the house chapel of the Franciscans. The Franciscan monastery existed until it was abolished in secularization in 1830 (the abolition decree of the monastery came from Munich on May 31, 1830), at which time 35 religious formed the Saint Anna convent.
The chapel itself was never sold; since the secularization it has always remained in the possession of the city of Passau, more precisely, in the possession of the Bürgerliche Heiliggeist-Stiftung, whereby its use varied continuously. At first it was used as a magazine by the invading French, while the monastery became French military quarters. It then acted as an armory for the Passau vigilante group. The ceiling frescoes were already painted over at that time, so fortunately they were well preserved under the lime layer.
From 1837, the rest of the building complex was used for an "employment institution for the homeless and the poor" and for the poor and sick. From 1889 to the 1960s, the Sankt-Anna-Kapelle served as a municipal warm bathing establishment , many older Passau citizens can still remember the bathing visits here, since most of the apartments in the old town did not have baths. At the same time, the public city scales were also located here .
After that, the Kunstverein Passau eV only used the chapel room as an exhibition and event space. Access was through the wooden gate, which is still visible today in Heiliggeistgasse. The first major renovation of the rooms did not take place until 1964, in the course of this work the ceiling frescoes from the Renaissance period were discovered, the paintings were all in their original condition due to the preservation under the lime layer and were made by the painter Gotthard Bauer from Munich-Solln uncovered: "In the city of Passau, King David has become visible again."
In 1987, a further modernization took place, which mainly concerned the technical equipment, in the years 1991 to 1993 the entire monastery complex was renovated again and the senior citizens' home located on the upper floors and in the neighboring building wing was modernized. The cloister was opened, the inner courtyard made accessible, and since then the exhibition space for the art association has almost doubled. Over the year the art association organizes around ten exhibitions of modern art.
literature
- Franz Mader: 400 years of St. Anne's Chapel. In: Passauer Kunstblätter.
- Britta Böhmisch-Massoth: The St. Anna Chapel of the former Franciscan monastery in Passau . Chair of Art History at the University of Passau, Passau 2005. (Master's thesis supervised by Wolfgang Augustyn), abbreviated for this article by Susanne Gibis
Coordinates: 48 ° 34 '24.7 " N , 13 ° 27' 33" E