Jour fixe des IEFN (Institut für die Erforschung der Frühen Neuzeit) in Kooperation mit Geschichte am Mittwoch des Instituts für Geschichte
Vortragende: Jure Donša (Ljubljana)
Vortragstitel: Stone Sculptures of St John of Nepomuk in Styria: Shaping the Habsburg Sacred Landscape
Moderation: Friedrich Polleroß
Ort: Hörsaal 30 im Hauptgebäude der Universität Wien, linker Seitentrakt, Stiege 7, 1. Stock (1010 Wien, Universitätsring 1)
Zeit: Mittwoch, 11. März 2026, 18:30
Abstract: St John of Nepomuk is among the most important and widely represented saints in Central European Baroque art. His cult reached Styria in the latter half of the seventeenth century, but experienced significant growth in the early decades of the following century. Sculpture played a decisive role in establishing the apparent ubiquity of Nepomuk’s physical presence in public space. His statues were commissioned by urban communities, ecclesiastical authorities, and noble families, and placed on bridges, in squares, and within gardens. As such, they functioned not only as symbols of faith and social status, but also as visual markers of political allegiance to the House of Habsburg, which was actively engaged in the saint’s beatification (1721) and unusually rapid canonisation (1729). Emperor Charles VI played a particularly important role in this process, encouraging the spread of the martyr’s cult in Styria. The prosperity of the cult was evident in the increased production of stone sculptures of St John of Nepomuk, through which he became a crucial marker of a distinctive sacred landscape, grounded in the principles of Pietas Austriaca. In the lecture, selected Styrian statues will be examined using an approach that combines art historical analyses and archival research. This allows for insight into the interplay between imperial influence, Church propaganda, and local patronage, which together contributed to the development of a Baroque sacred landscape.
Zur Person: Jure Donša is a research assistant at the France Stele Institute of Art History in Ljubljana, Slovenia and PhD candidate at the Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor, Slovenia. In his doctoral research, he focuses on public Baroque sculpture in Lower Styria, including column monuments, wayside shrines, Calvaries and freestanding sculptures of saints. The aim of his research is to systematically identify and document all figural wayside shrines (figurale Bildstöcke) in Lower Styria and to analyse them in their various historical contexts.