Wall and ceiling paintings in the baroque chapel of St. John of Nepomuk at Tuštanj castle

Abstract

The Baroque chapel situated at the entrance to Tuštanj Castle (Tuffstein) is decorated with frescoes showing the life, martyrdom and apotheosis of St. John of Nepomuk. The frescoes are discussed from the viewpoint of stylistic analysis, the question of authorship, iconography, visual and literary sources and patronage. The woeship and depicting of St. John of Nepomuk started long before his canonization in 1729; a significant stimulation came from Nepomuk’s biography written by the Bohemian patriot and Jesuit Bohuslav Balbín, first published in 1680 in the Acta Sanctorum. In the same way as the legend of the Nepomuk can be related to the Sternberg family through the allusion of their name to the Saint’s attributes (stars), so it can also be related to the owners og Tuštanj Castle, the Lichtenberg family (flames of light). Although certain doubts about Franc Jelovšek as the painter of the frescoes occur in scholarly literature, stylistic analysis has shown that the Lichenbergs nevertheless commissioned the murals from this fresco painter, the most important one in Carniola in the Baroque period. It is possible that they were commissioned after October 1724 by Georg Ludwig when his first-born son, Johann Nepomuk, died, however, according to its artistic sources not before 1729.