Medieval Stained Glass - Corpus Vitrearum

The project is dedicated to researching barely-known Medieval works of art, in particular the cataloguing and scientific investigation of Medieval stained and painted glass in Austria. Many hundreds of stained-glass windows from the 12th to the 16th centuries have survived as elements of the pictorial decoration of Romanesque and Gothic churches. A wide variety of iconographic programmes and images created in a broad spectrum of artistic expression reflect the rich intellectual and pictorial world of churches in the Middle Ages. Even by themselves, the glass windows present a record of how the rich, multicoloured interior decoration in architectural polychromy, wall-paintings and stained glass windows must have originally appeared in Romanesque and Gothic churches. Difficulties of access and possibilities of photographic documentation are among the reasons that stained-glass is among the least-researched areas of Medieval art. At the same time, it is one of the most endangered art forms, as the current atmospheric pollution has already dangerously accelerated the constantly-continuing decay of the substance. The art-historical documentation of the those still-extant stained glass works (at best, 5% of those created originally) is thus in urgent need of being researched. The project is part of the "Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi", an international research project which, under the aegis of UNESCO has dedicated itself to researching this art form in many different countries.

The project "Medieval Stained Glass - Corpus Vitrearum", conducted by Professor Dr. Ernst Bacher and his team (Dr. Elisabeth Oberhaidacher, Mag. Christina Wolf and Mag. Dr. Günther Buchinger), aimed at a complete inventory and documentation of medieval stained glass windows in the Austrian provinces of Salzburg, the Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Contrary to what has hitherto been assumed in the literature, systematic field research has yielded a considerably greater number of items still extant in the provinces under investigation, viz. 337 medieval stained glass-paintings found in 29 - rather than a mere 10 - locations. Each window was photographed and studied in situ, accompanied by a comprehensive historical and art historical documentation as well as a detailed report on its state of preservation. In addition, ground plans of all the churches together with plans showing the arrangement of the panes and other details were drawn. The scholarly study has focused on the reconstruction of the original decorative programmes, on stylistic analyses of the glass-paintings in context with the architecture, on historical preconditions as well as the art historical and historico-cultural context; a publication is in preparation. In the Tyrol, the increase turned out to be particularly striking, with 90 panes of glass found on 12 sites (as opposed to a former 42 items in four locations). For the first time, it has thus become possible to draw a detailed picture of Tyrolean stained glass-painting in the Middle Ages, which need no longer be considered an import from Southern Germany: there is clear evidence that the production of stained glass windows flourished in the Tyrol of the second half of the 15th century, its origins going back to the 14th century. Incidentally, in order to take into account the homogeneous nature of the Tyrol in terms of art and culture, also twenty sites in the South Tyrol were investigated in the course of the project. A similar increase can be reported for Salzburg, where a total of 240 panes of glass on 14 sites were recorded; previously, only 169 items in four locations had been known. Special emphasis has been placed on the pilgrimage church of St Leonhard ob Tamsweg, which still preserves more than 50 per cent of the original number of stained glass panels. The study of archival material and further research now permit a reconstruction of the important original picture decoration of this church. It has been possible to identify 15 donators (with some interesting historical background) and assign them to the extant cycles of stained glass windows. Judging by the stylistic analysis of monumental glass-paintings (produced between 1430 and 1450), Tamsweg must have been a focus for Salzburg`s pictorial art in the second quarter of the 15th century. Moreover, an investigation of further locations has yielded substantial insights into late Gothic painting in Salzburg. Extensive research has been carried out on the stained glass window in the choir of the abbey church on Salzburg`s Nonnberg; coming from a late Gothic workshop in Strasburg, they are of European standing. The project also included a systematic coverage of Styria, which resulted in a total of 450 stained glass panes on 49 sites (compared to an earlier 240 items in 25 locations). Finally, 2003 saw the publication of E. Frodl-Kraft`s study of the pictorial windows of St George`s Chapel in the castle of Wiener Neustadt, a contribution to the research on Lower Austrian stained glass windows.