Dusty Art

My prior Art posts can be found HERE.

How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it..

Let’s study art history together.

The Plague Column (Vienna, Austria)

Type	Holy Trinity column
Location	Graben, Vienna, Austria
Coordinates	48.2087°N 16.3698°E
Inaugurated	1694
Height
Architectural	High Baroque
Design and construction
Architect	Paul Strudel

This column was built in the aftermath of one of Europe’s last large plague outbreaks. It was also built in the aftermath of the Battle of Vienna in 1683 – one of the most famous and important military battles in history and the inspiration for (among other things) some of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fiction.) Vienna – and by extension the Holy Roman Empire and Christian Europe with it – had been through the ringer and there was a tremendous sense of gratitude and self-reflection taking place.

One way to celebrate and give thanks for survival was the construction of public art. This column is called a Holy Trinity Column. There is an interesting history in Europe, in this period of time, of building Marian and Holy Trinity Columns in the aftermath of a plague outbreak. (more on those via wiki)

Marian columns are religious monuments depicting the Virgin Mary on the top, often built in thanksgiving for the ending of a plague (plague columns) or for some other reason. The purpose of the Holy Trinity columns was usually simply to celebrate the church and the faith, though the plague motif could sometimes play its role in their erection as well. Erecting religious monuments in the form of a column surmounted by a figure or a Christian symbol was a gesture of public faith that flourished in the Catholic countries of Europe, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Thus, they became one of the most visible features of Baroque architecture. This usage also influenced some Eastern Orthodox Baroque architecture.

History

In Imperial Rome, it was the practice to erect a statue of the Emperor atop a column. In 1381, Michael Tutz erected the gothic Tutzsäule at Klosterneuburg Monastery to mark the ending of an epidemic.

The Christian practice of erecting a column topped with a statue of the Virgin Mary became common especially in the Counter-Reformation period following the Council of Trent (1545–1563).

The column in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome was one of the first. Erected in 1614, it was designed by Carlo Maderno during the papacy of Paul V. Maderno’s fountain at the base combines the armorial eagles and dragons of Paul V (Borghese). The column, with a Corinthian capital, is topped with a statue of the Virgin and the child Jesus. The column itself is ancient: it had supported the vault of the so-called Basilica of Constantine in the Roman Forum, destroyed by an earthquake in the 9th century. By the 17th century only this column survived; in 1614 it was transported to Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore and crowned with a bronze statue of the Virgin and Child made by Domenico Ferri. In a papal bull from the year of its installation, the pope decreed an indulgence for those who uttered a prayer to the Virgin while saluting the column. Within decades it served as a model for many columns in Italy and other European countries.

Dreifaltigkeitssäule

The basic model which inspired building most Holy Trinity columns is that in the Grabenplatz, Vienna, built after the 1679 plague; in this monument the column, has entirely disappeared in marble clouds and colossal saints, angels and putti. The column became a site of pilgrimage during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is a Holy Trinity Column in Holy Trinity Square, in front of Matthias Church in Budapest, a plague memorial erected in 1713, which served as a model for many similar works in the country.

The era of these religious structures culminated with the outstanding Holy Trinity Column in Horní Square in Olomouc. This monument, built shortly after the plague which struck Moravia (nowadays in the Czech Republic) between 1714 and 1716, was exceptional because of its monumentality, rich decoration and unusual combination of sculptural material (stone and gilded copper). Its base was made so big that even a chapel was hidden inside. This column is the only one which has been individually inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as “one of the most exceptional examples of the apogee of central European Baroque artistic expression”.

There is also a Holy Trinity Column in the main square of Linz. The Holy Trinity Column in Teplice was designed by Matthias Braun and erected in thanksgiving for the city having been spared the plague in 1713. Braun also designed the Marian column in Jaroměř.

So you can see that there’s both a tradition and a purpose associated with these columns, many of which still stand in Europe today. Among the more famous, though is the subject of this post – Plague Column (or the Trinity Column) in Vienna. The level of Baroque artistry and detail here is incredible.

(more via wiki)

The Plague Column (German: die Wiener Pestsäule), or Trinity Column (German: Dreifaltigkeitssäule), is a Holy Trinity column located on the Graben, a street in the inner city of Vienna, Austria. Erected after the Great Plague epidemic in 1679, the Baroque memorial is one of the best known and most prominent sculptural artworks in the city. Christine M. Boeckl, author of Images of Plague and Pestilence, calls it “one of the most ambitious and innovative sculptural ensembles created anywhere in Europe in the post-Bernini era.”

History

In 1679, Vienna suffered one of the last great plague epidemics. Fleeing the city, the Habsburg emperor Leopold I vowed to erect a mercy column if the epidemic would end. In the same year, a provisional wooden column made by Johann Frühwirth was inaugurated, showing the Holy Trinity on a Corinthian column together with nine sculpted angels (for the Nine Choirs of Angels).

In 1683, Matthias Rauchmiller was commissioned to create a general design as well as some sculptures. Rauchmiller died in 1686, but his basic conception and three of his angel figures can still be seen on the modern monument.

Several new designs followed, among others by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, who designed the sculptures at the base of the column. Finally, the project management was assigned to Paul Strudel, who based his work on the concept of theatre engineer Lodovico Burnacini.

Below the Trinity figure, Burnacini envisioned a cloud pyramid with angel sculptures as well as the kneeling emperor Leopold, praying to a sculpture of faith. Among others, the sculptors Tobias Kracker and Johann Bendel contributed to the column. The column was inaugurated in 1694.

In spite of the long construction period, the frequent amendments of the design and the large number of sculptors involved, the monument appears quite homogeneous. During the design period, it changed from a conservative memorial column to a High Baroque scene, narrating a story in a theatrical form. The monument thus indicates the transition to the era of High Baroque in Vienna. It highly influenced the style and was imitated in the whole Austrian region.

Iconography

The column has a complex iconography, the basic message of which is that the plague and the Ottomans’ Second Siege of Vienna (1683), both of them punishments for sin, were averted or defeated by the piety and intercession of the Emperor Leopold I. (The pillar thus also represents a (victory) monument to that emperor.)

In the iconography, the Trinity expresses itself several times in the number three, namely vertically in three stages:

1. the pedestal, reserved for mankind, in the upper third of which Leopold I prays to God as an intercessor;
2. a second, higher level occupied by angels, in an intermediate zone between God and mankind;
3. and the highest level, reserved for the Holy Trinity.

In addition, there is also a tripartite division in plan, which establishes a connection between the sacral program and the three parts of the Habsburg monarchy:

1. The western face is dedicated to God the Father and bears a double-headed eagle, the coat of arms of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the coats of arms of the Inner Austrian lands, the duchies of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. Between the western and eastern wings are the coats of arms for the core countries of the monarchy.
2. The eastern face is associated with the Son of God and bears the coats of arms of the kingdoms of Hungary, Croatia and Dalmatia, as well as Bosnia.
3. The northern face, which belongs to the Holy Spirit, is decorated with the coats of arms of the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Margraviate of Upper Lusatia and Lower Silesia, as well as the Duchy of Silesia.

This place is incredible and as mentioned above, it was pretty recently pilgrimage site during the height of the COVID-19 epidemic. The tradition of constructing columns like this is one I would not mind seeing brought back. Public beautification along with community-wide self-reflection seems to me to be a good goal.

I definitely recommend taking a look at this memorial in video form below, because you can get a better sense of its details and scale.