Baroque Ceiling Painting, Jesuit Art, Czech Jesuit province, concepts, sketches, painting descriptions
Abstract
The paper deals with design of wall-paintings within Jesuit order, specifically in the area of former Czech Jesuit province. Preparatory phase of Jesuit wall-paintings did not differ from other Church or secular commissions.
The commissioner usually produced or had produced a suitable theme, iconographic-iconological concept. Within Czech Jesuit province, only the author of concetto for fresco cycle in Brno Assumption of the Virgin Mary Church by Felix Anton Scheffler is known.
It was designed by P. Heinrich Mehrer, professor of rhetoric.
After approving the idea, the artist elaborated a number of drawing designs. Drawings, for demanding commissions, colour oil sketch, or even a three-dimensional painted model of vault or cupola, then routinely formed a part of the client- artist contract.
The only three-dimensional model preserved is modello for vaulting fresco of Klementinum library hall by Johann Hiebl. On the other hand, oil painting depicting part of the fresco in Olomouc Corpus Christi Chapel is considered to be a ricordo by Jan Kryštof Handke.
More drawing studies are preserved - eg. sketches by J. M.
Rottmayr for the church in Wrocław, Hiebl's design for a fresco in the Mirror Chapel in Prague's Klementinum, drawings by F. A.
Scheffler for the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, Brno, Palka's Designs for St. Nicholas Church, Prague.
The iconographic descriptions of wall-paintings are printed or handwritten, produced only after completion of frescoes. Printed descriptions appear in topographic manuals.
Descriptions of finished paintings are to be found in the historiography of the province, in the history of college, or in the specific Jesuit source - annual reports (Litterae annuae). Although there is usually only information about the painting completion, they sometimes provide the only source for works which ceased to exist.
Sometimes there is also a basic iconographic outline of wall-paintings (eg Hiebl's frescoes in the Church of St. Clement or in the Mirror Chapel in Prague's Klementinum).