St. Ruprecht (Bruck an der Mur)
The St. Ruprecht Church in the Friedhof, (also: Ruprechtskirche und Rupertikirche ) in Bruck an der Mur , Styria ( Austria ), is best known for its frescoes from around 1416. The Roman Catholic Church is located a little outside the city, is now only used for funeral ceremonies and is dedicated to St. Erhard .
church
The church of St. Ruprecht is surrounded by a cemetery, a little higher on the right bank of the Mur outside the city. A stone tablet next to the west portal, which can no longer be completely deciphered, mentions the year 1063 as the alleged first consecration date, a claim that is doubted by well-known art historians, as a parish church it is mentioned around 1195 to 1545.
Originally there was a flat-roofed Romanesque church here, which corresponds to today's southern nave with an attached choir square tower. In the years 1415 and 1416, a second ship was north of it added, which was joined by breakthrough of the former north wall with the existing ship, and on the east by a 8.5 - apse is completed. Furthermore, a two-bay choir with a 5/8 end was added to the east of the tower , and the sacristy and a round stair tower to the south . In 1770 the church tower was raised and closed with a baroque onion dome with a lantern .
Inside, a is Kreuzrippengewölbe provided Church two naves and vierjochig . The pillars and ribs are painted with joints, the keystones are sculpted and colorful. The baroque high altar from around 1680 is dedicated to St. Rupert, the altarpiece shows St. Rupert and an old view of the church on the lower left edge. There are also some Baroque side altars in the church, a pulpit by Matthäus Krenauer from 1735, a Baroque organ and a late Gothic octagonal baptismal font made of red marble.
Frescoes
The frescoes on the inner triumphal arch wall , a representation of the Last Judgment , were created together with a high altar that no longer exists in the period around 1416. With a size of 7.8 × 7 meters, the frescoes represent the largest preserved medieval wall painting in Styria .
The commission for the Last Judgment fresco was given by the provost and archpriest Oelhaben and Thurego. They were carried out (here are various expert opinions) either by the Judenburg painter's workshop or, as an emergency name , the Bruck master . Since the Gothic, with its ideal of dissolving the wall surfaces, and especially the German Gothic, with its net ribs, have no large closed wall surfaces, the size of the fresco (around 45 m²) is outstanding.
The paintings were uncovered in 1937 by Edmund Stierschneider, a secondary school teacher from Bruck. The condition of the frescoes is excellent. Edmund Stierschneider describes the presentation as follows:
Christ, enthroned on a rainbow, flanked by two trumpeting angels who herald Judgment Day. The sun and moon announce that they have shone for the last time. His mother Mary (larger than life) kneels in prayer on Christ's right hand. Below her stand angels with instruments of suffering; Scourge column, cross and lance. Below pious people in a chapel. In the middle part of the wall, at the feet of Jesus, there are apostles, church fathers, confessors and saints, among them St. Rupert as the patron of the church.
Below this is physical death as the point of separation of good and bad. Under the bone man, the good guys are already going to heaven's door. The porter with the key is waiting for them. In the opposite direction, the wicked pull away, tied on a bloody rope. There is a plaque with the text above the good ones
Behind the bad guys hangs a ribbon with the words
Above to the left hand of the Holy Judge kneels, again larger than life, the favorite disciple of Jesus, John.
The wonderful head turns to its master. Below that stand as a counterpart to the angels, with the instruments of torture, the despicable, who are marked with name tablets: Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod. A big sneering devil pulls her to him with a bow on which it is written
Including a huge jaws of hell. It has the shape of a dragon head, the mouth of which is wide open. The upper jaw measures over three meters. It is in this infernal abyss that the damned suffer excruciating torments. Snakes and toads bite their bare bodies, and a whole host of devils appear as tormentors. Unchastity is horribly punished. Your body is half consumed by the flames. The upper part still burns at the height of the hips and even the part that has been spared is plagued by animals. A woman has just been brought in to slaughter her child. As a punishment, from this point on she carries small heads in her hands.
In addition to the large fresco on the inner triumphal arch wall, there is another fresco from the same period on the south wall of the choir, which shows the three city saints of Zurich , from whom the client Oelhaben von Thurego ( Thurgau ) came. This fresco shows the siblings St. Felix and St. Regula as well as St. Exuperantius, who, according to legend, were beheaded under Maximilian in the 9th century and carried their severed heads to the grave. There is also a long inscription in Gothic minuscule that has not yet been examined in detail.
Surroundings of the church
The church is surrounded by a cemetery on which there is a Romanesque charnel house from the early 13th century. This Karner, consecrated to St. Erhard, has a Gothic roof and is used today as a war memorial .
There are also some historicist tombs from around 1900 in the cemetery .
literature
- Heimo Kaindl, Alois Ruhri: The churches of Bruck an der Mur. Diözesanmuseum Graz, Graz 2002, ISBN 3-901810-09-9 , pp. 26–32.
- Kurt Woisetschläger: Styria. (Without Graz). 2nd unchanged edition. Berger, Horn et al. 2006, ISBN 3-85028-422-0 , pp. 57-59 ( Dehio-Handbuch, die Kunstdenkmäler Österreichs ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Parish Bruck an der Mur. In: catholic-kirche-steiermark.at. Retrieved August 14, 2020 .
Coordinates: 47 ° 24 ′ 14 ″ N , 15 ° 15 ′ 21 ″ E