Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege LXXVIII, Heft 3

The creation of freestanding Gothic stone sculpture has always been tied to political or religious causes. As long as social conditions remained unchanged, the displays of stone received adequate attention, care, and maintenance. This helped preserve the stone material and the coloring. If those conditions changed, important measures to maintain, preserve, or restore the sculpture could be neglected. This resulted in damage of varying magnitude. From their inception, such sculptures were exposed to damaging natural processes caused by the climate and the weather. There were, however, options for curbing the damage dynamics: for example, architectural parts offering protection such as niches, porches, and canopies, or by providing sacrificial layers in the form of cleaning, painting, or whitewashing. In the nineteenth century, people came to increasingly understand that original art was valuable and should be preserved even in a reduced state. Lapidaries came about, and museums began displaying incomplete statues more and more. Ideas and theories to preserve historic monuments brought new insight to the significance of Gothic architectural sculpture and, with the Venice Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, a more intense scientific examination of stone decay and preservation allowed many sculptures to be rescued and preserved.

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Historic monument preservation is not the only scenario where architectural sculptures and other works of art are handled according to objective requirements and subjective perception: a new history of such works also begins when they are taken out of their architectural and artistic contexts and placed in museums. A museum is caught in a constant conflict between doing justice to the creator’s original intention and telling the story of the object itself, which has since become altered and damaged. Simultaneously conveying that separation of its history before it was acquired and how it has changed in the context of the collection remains challenging. By removing the sculpture from its original location, this part of its history often fades into the background at the museum. It’s hard for the curator to take all perspectives into account. Where these decisions of the presentation in the museum ensemble could guide the viewer’s perception, and what is ultimately conveyed, will be explained using five examples from the sculpture collection of the State Museums in Berlin.

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Although air pollution has been reversed, the most obvious problem is the black gypsum crusts. The prompt cleaning of the statues reduces further damage. The most effective protection of sculptures involves structural measures. Historical examples include the porch of the Singer’s Gate (around 1440), and current examples comprise the protection of cornices, gargoyles, and other exhibited building components from moisture penetration, mostly with lead sheet metal, and improving water flow to the building in general. During and after World War II, outdoor statues were brought inside to fill empty spaces caused by the destruction. Today, 3D scans, photogrammetry, drone flights, cherry pickers, and climbers are used for the studies. Sculptures are cleaned by lasers and microsandblasting, and missing places are sculpturally filled in.

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The princes’ statues from St. Stephen’s are among the most significant works of art in the Wien Museum’s collection. They were thoroughly examined and restored while the main building on the Karlsplatz was being refurbished and structurally expanded, and in preparation for the new permanent exhibit. This project brought new findings on the history of the works’ damage and restoration, the latter being closely tied to the change of location and the presentations of the statues. The currently implemented restoration contributed to the statues’ legibility, maintenance, and care, and heightened their sculptural and aesthetic effect as part of the new presentation of the Wien Museum. The following article will delve into the sculptures’ history and significance (Andreas Nierhaus), then outline their location and restoration history (Anna Boomgaarden and Alexandra Czarnecki), and finally, in the center of the article, present the latest investigations and restorative measures and the resulting findings (Anna-Maria Tupy). In conclusion, a few thoughts on the contextualization of the statues in their chronological tour of the new permanent exhibit of the Wien Museum will be formulated (Michaela Kronberger).

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The fifteenth-century limestone baptismal font and its nineteenth-century wooden cover were brought from the Parish Church of Saint Peter and Paul in Münsteuer, Upper Austria, to the workshops of the Bundesdenkmalamt (Austrian Federal Monuments Office) at the Arsenal in Vienna in 2022. This was because the baptismal font’s stone substance had become fragmented – cracked open by rust due to the corrosion of the iron elements that had been installed – and because the paintwork had been progressively lost, parts were missing, and the font’s cover had lost its polychromy. Scientific examinations have dated the surviving paint layers as belonging to the nineteenth and twentieth century. Restoration measures included bonding all fragmented stone parts, removing rusting iron parts, and reinforcing and retouching the paint layers, among other things. Wood cracks in the baptismal font cover were closed, its paintwork was reinforced and retouched, and missing parts were replaced.

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The entrance portal of Tovačov Chateau (district Přerov, Central Moravia) is one of the most important early Renaissance artworks in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. The portal’s frieze preserves an inscription with the name of the tower’s client, where the portal is situated. The inscription includes the year “1492,” so many Czech and foreign art historians believe the whole portal was executed during that year. Since around 2013, however, several art historians have expressed doubts that the portal’s preservation is authentic, mainly because many of its parts are still preserved in astonishingly sharp relief (such as the egg and dart on the archivolt, the acanthus in the spandrels, and the composite capitals of the demi-columns). The portal was renovated and adapted according to the design of Viennese architect Max Fleischer no later than 1889. In 1905, Fleischer published a text describing the reconstruction of the Tovačov Chateau. In the article, the author analyses not only the portal and its state of preservation but also the old texts from the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century describing the portal (or at least the frieze) with the inscription and date “1492.” Based on these texts, and on the considerable difference in the state of preservation of the portal’s concrete parts, the author concludes that only the frieze with the inscription 1492 dates from that year. The lower part of the portal (demi-columns, spandrels, archivolt, etc.) was executed in the late sixteenth century and renovated in the nineteenth century by Max Fleischer.

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The article presents a painting by the Viennese painter Josef Kessler that is currently located in the Convent of the Congregation of the Brothers Comforters of Gethsemane (CCG) in Marianka. The large-scale oil painting of notable artistic quality arrived in Marianka in the mid-twentieth century, although it was originally created for the Jesuit monastery in Bratislava. The article explains the circumstances behind the painting’s origin and its transfer from Bratislava to Marianka. After 1950, the painting was to be part of the collections of the Religious Museum in Marianka, but the museum was never built. The forgotten painting by Kessler survived the communist era and has remained in good condition to this day.

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