Photograph: Mario Braun


Name of Monument:

Franciscan Church and Monastery of Our Lady of Trsat

Also known as:

Crkva Majke Božje Trsatske

Location:

Rijeka, Trsat, Kvarner, Croatia

Contact DetailsFranciscan Church and Monastery of Our Lady of Trsat
Samostan Majke Božje Trsatske,
Frabkopanski trg 21
51 000 Rijeka
T : +385 51 452 900
Franciscan Province of St Cyril and Method  (Responsible Institution)

Date:

17th and 18th Centuries

Artists:

Painters: Giovanni Pietro de Pomis (active 1569, Lodi–1633, Graz), Serafin Schön (d. 1642), Cristoforo Tasca (1667–1737), workshop of Giovanni Pacassi (active c. 1700), Dionizije Hoffer (d. 1741), Ivo Schweiger (d. 1757)

Denomination / Type of monument:

Religious, church

Patron(s):

The Frankopan family; Count Nikola V Frankopan , Stefano della Rovere, Franjo Frankulin, Katarina Sorčan, Sebastian Glavinić, Franjo Gabriel Aichelberg

History:

The founding of the Franciscan Church and Monastery on the hill of Trsat in Rijeka dates back to the 13th century, built in veneration of the legend of the transportation of the Holy House of Loreto from the Holy Land to Trsat in Rijeka. According to the legend, angels brought the Holy House to the Franciscan church and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary in 1291. Three years later, in 1294, the “Santa Casa” was again transported by angels to Recanati and, finally, in 1295, to Loreto. The church and monastery have both been renovated and extended several times since Count Martin Frankopan initiated the building of the Church of our Lady in the 15th century. In 1641, he had both church and monastery completely renovated in the Baroque style; the Baroque interior decoration spans the 17th and 18th centuries, with works of various stylistic origins.

Description:

The Baroque inventory of the Franciscan Church and Monastery of Our Lady of Trsat in Rijeka speaks eloquently of the milieus that influenced art and architecture in Croatia during the Baroque era:  the Central European artistic and cultural influence in the North, and Italian, mostly Venetian, in the South. Both influences met in Rijeka because of its close proximity to Italy and due to the fact that at the time the town was under the domain of the Habsburg Monarchy. The political connection between Rijeka and the capital of Styria, Graz, resulted in Giovanni Pietro de Pomis being commissioned by Stefano della Rovere (Captain of Rijeka between 1608 and 1638) to paint the altarpiece of St. Anne for a side-altar in the Church of Our Lady of Trsat. Stefano della Rovere played an important role in the revival of the city of Rijeka, strengthening its commercial links and settling military and political disputes between Venice and the court in Graz. The Altarpiece of St. Anne, commissioned to commemorate the death of Rovere's wife, is the work of Giovanni Pietro de Pomis, Ferdinand II's most respected artist and architect before the artist's transition to the Viennese court in 1633.
In the 1630s and 40s, the Franciscan lay-brother painter from Switzerland, Serafin Schön, worked in the monastery in Trsat. The influence of 16th–17th-century Bavarian painting in Schön's characteristically brilliant colouring is clear, bearing a resemblance to that of Peter Candido or Antonio Maro Viani whose altarpiece paintings are in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Munich. Assumedly, therefore, prints were not Schön's only inspiration while he was painting the Trsat compositions.
In the first decade of the 18th century, the Venetian painter, Cristoforo Tasca, appeared. Tasca, originally from Bergamo, was a pupil of Antonio Zanchi from whom he inherited the “tenebroso” style of painting. Between 1704 and 1714, he painted the Old Testament themes of Manna from Heaven and Multiplication of the Loaves for the monastery in Trsat, as well as a large ceiling painting the Assumption of the Virgin in the Summer Refectory. Above the triumphal arch in the church, Tasca painted the Annunciation and the Transportation of the Holy House of Loreto to Trsat.
The three wooden side altars of around 1723 are by the Franciscan lay-brother sculptors of Tyrolean origin, Dionizije Hoffer and Ivo Schweiger. Their stylistic origins are discernable in the formal features of their works, which are markedly influenced by some of Tyrol's leading Baroque sculptors.

View Short Description

Founded initially in the 13th century, the Church and Monastery of Our Lady of Trsat is Croatia's oldest sanctuary. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, it was built in 1291 in veneration of the legend of the transportation of the Holy House of Loreto from Jerusalem to Trsat in Rijeka. In the 15th century, the Church of Our Lady was built and the Franciscan Monastery alongside it; both were redesigned extensively during the following centuries. The inventory of the church demonstrates a development of style throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, revealing a wide range of different stylistic influences.

How Monument was dated:

The monument and its inventory are dated in archival sources and by the inscriptions.

Special features

St. Anne with Saints and the Rovere Family

Left-hand side altarpiece in St. Anne’s Chapel

1624

Giovanni Pietro de Pomis (active 1569, Lodi–1633, Graz)

The Virgin Mary with the Infant Jesus and St. Anne in the mid-ground of the composition form the characteristic motif known as "St Anne Selfthird" meaning St Anne with two others (in German, Die heilige Anna selbdritt), an iconographic convention that began in the 14th century. On the right-hand side of the composition are members of the Rovere family together with their saint-protectors. On the left-hand side, a Franciscan monk is seen in profile.

Annunciation and Transportation of the Holy House

Triumphal Arch, Franciscan Church and Monastery of Our Lady of Trsat

1714

Cristoforo Tasca (1667–1737)

Signed: XTOFORO TASCA, 1714
The inscription beneath the painting reads Munificentia Ilustrissimi Dni, Dni Francisci Ignatii Lib. Bar. de Androcha, Dni in Kostell., Kruppa etc. Haec Imago in honorem Miraculosissimae Virginis Tersactanae erecta fuit”; “Virgo sanCtIssIMa, HVIC BENEFACTORI NVnC IN artICVLO VLTae sVae, aC PERPEtVo Tva PIETaTE TVIsqVe GRATIIS PROPITIARE. (By efforts of the noble Francis Ignatius Androcha, the baron of Androhia, the lord of Kostell, Kruppa etc. this image was painted in honour of the miraculous virgin of Trsat …)

Mystical Supper of the Holy Family

Summer Refectory, west wall, Franciscan Church and Monastery of Our Lady of Trsat

1640

Serafin Schön (d. 1642)

Inscription on the bottom right-hand side:
Facta a Fr. Serafino Schön O.M.S. franc. Croatiae Carnioliae An. 1640. Refacta vero a DD. Josepho Candito Italo Neapolitano et Georgio Esperlinn Germano Helveto anno 1777. Mense Augusto. (Painted by the Franciscan lay brother Seraphin Schön in August 1777; repaired by Italian Joseph (Giuseppe) Candito and German-Swiss Georgio Esperlinn).
The theme of the painting is the Sacrifice of Christ presented in a tripartite composition in which the central part belongs to the quiet meal of the Holy Family. The food they are eating has a symbolic meaning. On the left, another set table symbolises Christ's Passion carefully arranged by angels and archangels led by St. Michael. On the right-hand side, two large angels are frying fish, while the two small ones are playing with birds, making clear that this painting belongs to the Franciscan Order.

Altar of St. John of Nepomuk

Right-hand side altar in the main nave, Franciscan Church and Monastery of Our Lady of Trsat

1723

Dionizije Hoffer (d. 1741)

The essential features of the sculptures are in the independently decorative luxuriance of the drapery, which in places grows into abstractly dramatic labyrinths, hiding in its mass the body of the saints; a plastic mass of clothing that with its abundance of folds and deep shadow hides its volume. The expressive faces, with deep, emphatic lines on the noses and eyelids, correlate well with this overall modelling.

High Altar

Presbytery, Franciscan Church and Monastery of Our Lady of Trsat

1692

workshop of Giovanni Pacassi (active c. 1700)

Two sculptures from the Pacassi workshop: St. Francis on the left and St. John the Evangelist on the right.

Selected bibliography:

Radmila, M., Crkva Gospe Trsatske i franjevački samostan, Rijeka, 1991.
Repanić-Braun, M., Barokno slikarstvo u Hrvatskoj franjevačkoj provinciji sv. Ćirila i Metoda, Zagreb, 2004.
Baričević, D., Barokno kiparstvo sjeverne Hrvatske, Zagreb, 2008.

Citation of this web page:

Mirjana Repanić-Braun "Franciscan Church and Monastery of Our Lady of Trsat" in "Discover Baroque Art", Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://baroqueart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=monument;BAR;hr;Mon11;24;en

Prepared by: Mirjana Repanić-BraunMirjana Repanić-Braun

SURNAME: Repanić-Braun
NAME: Mirjana

AFFILIATION: Institute of Art History, Zagreb

TITLE: PhD, Scientific Consultant

CV:
From 1981 to 1982 Mirjana Repanić-Braun was a curator of the Academy’s collection of sculpture in the Gliptoteque of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences; from 1983 to 1998 she worked in the Croatian Academy’s Archives for Visual Arts. Mirjana has been employed as a researcher at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb since 1998: from 2001, as head of the scientific project Baroque Painting, Sculpture and Crafts of Continental Croatia, and since 2006, as head of the scientific project Baroque, Classicism and Historicism in the Arts of North Croatia. Mirjana teaches Art History at the universities of Rijeka and Split. At the University of Zagreb, she participates at doctoral level in the Faculty of Croatian Studies and the Faculty of Philosophy.

Translation by: Graham McMaster, Mirjana Repanić-BraunMirjana Repanić-Braun

SURNAME: Repanić-Braun
NAME: Mirjana

AFFILIATION: Institute of Art History, Zagreb

TITLE: PhD, Scientific Consultant

CV:
From 1981 to 1982 Mirjana Repanić-Braun was a curator of the Academy’s collection of sculpture in the Gliptoteque of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences; from 1983 to 1998 she worked in the Croatian Academy’s Archives for Visual Arts. Mirjana has been employed as a researcher at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb since 1998: from 2001, as head of the scientific project Baroque Painting, Sculpture and Crafts of Continental Croatia, and since 2006, as head of the scientific project Baroque, Classicism and Historicism in the Arts of North Croatia. Mirjana teaches Art History at the universities of Rijeka and Split. At the University of Zagreb, she participates at doctoral level in the Faculty of Croatian Studies and the Faculty of Philosophy.

Translation copyedited by: Mandi GomezMandi Gomez

Amanda Gomez is a freelance copy-editor and proofreader working in London. She studied Art History and Literature at Essex University (1986–89) and received her MA (Area Studies Africa: Art, Literature, African Thought) from SOAS in 1990. She worked as an editorial assistant for the independent publisher Bellew Publishing (1991–94) and studied at Bookhouse and the London College of Printing on day release. She was publications officer at the Museum of London until 2000 and then took a role at Art Books International, where she worked on projects for independent publishers and arts institutions that included MWNF’s English-language editions of the books series Islamic Art in the Mediterranean. She was part of the editorial team for further MWNF iterations: Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean Virtual Museum and the illustrated volume Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean.

True to its ethos of connecting people through the arts, MWNF has provided Amanda with valuable opportunities for discovery and learning, increased her editorial experience, and connected her with publishers and institutions all over the world. More recently, the projects she has worked on include MWNF’s Sharing History Virtual Museum and Exhibition series, Vitra Design Museum’s Victor Papanek and Objects of Desire, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s online publication 2 or 3 Tigers and its volume Race, Nation, Class.

MWNF Working Number: HR 36

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