Master HGG’s Ribnica period

Historical circumstances of the creation of Geiger’s paintings in the parish of Ribnica

Abstract

In the 1640s, altar paintings for some of succursal churches in the parish of Ribnica were produced by Hans Georg Geiger von Geigerfeld, better known as Master HGG. To evaluate his Ribnica opus and properly place it in time and space as well as to accord it an appropriate place in Slovenian art history, it is necessary to conduct an overall survey of the Ribnica district in the period of Catholic restoration. The article, however, also provides an outline of the cultural, social and ecclesiastic-administrative conditions that dominated the wider area of the then Lower Carniola where Geiger’s workshop operated. The visitation report drawn up by the parish priest and Archdeacon of Ribnica Franz Maximilian Vaccano as well as the connections between the local nobility of that time as commissioners on the one hand and influential clerics and monastic orders (the executors of the programmes of post-Trent Catholic restoration) on the other casts light on the deeper motivations and laws of Geiger’s religious painting. Print templates were of pivotal importance: by offering guarantee to commissioners as to the correctness of re-Catholicisation contents and by serving as a model and recourse for the painter in his formal and stylistic conveying of the art matter commissioned.