St. Veit am Bichl
St. Veit am Bichl is a Romanesque church near the South Tyrolean village of Tartsch , which belongs to the municipality of Mals . It is located on the Tartscher Bichl in the upper Vinschgau .
On the ground of a pre-Christian place of worship, a Romanesque style church was built in the 11th century, consecrated to St. Vitus and the exterior has remained almost unchanged since then. The church is surrounded by a mighty, high stone wall and is flanked by a tall, slender Romanesque tower. The surprisingly spacious interior is spanned by a wooden ceiling that was made at the beginning of the 16th century. The traces of fire that are still visible in some places date from the time of the Engadine War in 1499. On the north wall, partially covered by a baroque altar erected there, there is a cycle of frescoes from 1520 about the martyrdom of St. Vitus, who lived in the time of Diocletian Has.
The Romanesque frescoes in the apse of the church from around 1200, which have been preserved in fragments, are significant in art history. The remains of these paintings - a meander frieze with a bead ribbon, Christ in the mandorla with the evangelist symbols in the vault, two shielded sea monsters fighting with each other, a bearded man, blowing a Krummhorn, a row of apostles between saints, volute tendrils with cruciform flowers in the window reveal - show the quality of the work, which it places in the vicinity of the frescoes, also preserved in fragments, by the hand of the Marienberg master in the collegiate church of the Marienberg Abbey .
In the 16th century, a Gothic winged altar from the Engadine was purchased for the church , which came from the workshop of the sculptor Ivo Strigel . The Reformation spread in the Engadin at that time , during which many such altars fell victim to the iconoclasm or were sold. In 1958 the shrine figures of the altar (Maria, Luzius and Florinus ) were stolen from the church. They only reappeared in the Munich art trade in May 2011 and were subsequently bought back.
The church and the gate of the enclosure wall are usually locked. The key is managed by a family in Tartsch who live next to the church. In summer, a guided tour on the Tartscher Bichl is offered once a week.
literature
- Josef Weingartner : The art monuments of South Tyrol. Volume 2: Bozen and surroundings, Unterland, Burggrafenamt, Vinschgau. 7th edition, edit. by Magdalena Hörmann-Weingartner. Bozen-Innsbruck-Vienna: Athesia-Tyrolia 1991. ISBN 88-7014-642-1 , pp. 932-935.
Web links
- Entry in the monument browser on the website of the South Tyrolean Monuments Office
Coordinates: 46 ° 40 ′ 44.4 " N , 10 ° 33 ′ 42.1" E