Parish Church of the Virgin Marija in Puščava

The Pilgrimage Church in Puščava represents the peak of 17th-century art in the Podravje region and is also one of the most important monuments of late Renaissance and early Baroque architecture in Slovenia. In 1627, the abbot of the Benedictine monastery had the Church of the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary built, but due to the rapid development of the pilgrimage site, the next abbot ordered the church to be rebuilt in 1672, preserving only the bell tower from the previous one. The interior of the large church consists of a three-aisled space and an eastern section, formed by semicircular chapels and a semicircular presbytery. The clear and transparent interior is given its distinctive character by the strong plastic articulation of the architecture: pilasters with rich leafy capitals, semicircular arcades with masks, and ribs dividing the cross vaults. The church furnishings are also of very high quality. Twisted columns and numerous statues mark the three-tiered main altar and the chapel altars, the latter enriched with four large statues each, unique in Slovenian material.

Sometimes it seems to us how “Renaissance” certain countries are. And if they have the Renaissance in their cultural heritage, they lack nothing in art. In neighboring Italy, for example, anyone who breathes art is struck with awe at the fullness of the Renaissance. And how could it be otherwise, since it is perfection.

Experiencing a given space involves a special exchange; man gives the space his emotions and associations, and the space gives him its aura, which evokes and liberates human perception and thought. An architectural work is not just an experience of individual images in our eyes, but we experience it in its embodied and spiritual essence.

It offers us pleasing forms and surfaces, shaped for the touch of the eye and other senses. It also includes other bodily and spiritual structures and gives our existential experience an inner connection and meaning.

Puščava, which in the 11th century was probably truly a “desert,” came into the possession of the famous Benedictine monastery in St. Pavel in Carinthia in 1091. In these lands (and in the wider surroundings as well) it strengthened its economic base over the centuries, and by building churches and chapels also fostered religious thought. Thus, at the beginning of the 17th century, when the monastery was at the height of its power, Abbot Hieronimus Markstaller decided to build a new church dedicated to Marija, instead of the previous chapel of St. Štefan in Puščava.

This is testified by an inscription plaque built into the exterior of the church’s presbytery, which cites the year 1627, when the church was built. Another plaque, built into the right side of the church, states that the church was later significantly enlarged and its design thoroughly altered. In 1672, under Abbot Philipp Rotenhausler, the church was completed and consecrated in the form it still has today. In it we recognize a type of building characteristic of the efforts in shaping church architecture of the seventeenth century.

The Puščava church has its history and tells its story, therefore it demands from the viewer a completely unique approach. With its layers of memory it addresses him to enter into dialogue with it, thus forming an organism which, if a spark passes between them, can in many ways transcend the message of the traditionally conceived architectural organism.
The exterior of the church does not tell us much, since with its smooth walls it is rather plain; only the segmental windows in two stories suggest that the interior architecture and the space rise powerfully upwards. It is also worth mentioning that its longitudinal body has two rounded chapels on the sides and that the deeper presbytery on the eastern side is semicircularly closed.

The church has three stone entrances, of which the main one, with two columns and a broken pediment, is especially emphasized. All three entrances feature sculptural decoration with angelic heads and fruit, which is one of the characteristics of the Renaissance.

In short, the Puščava church can rightly be called a monument of late Renaissance architecture, while most of the interior furnishings that follow show the stylistic features of the emerging Baroque.

The Renaissance period in Slovenia is still a tough nut to crack, since here northern and southern Renaissance often intersected, though it is true that architecture at that time was in many places at least superficially intoxicated with antiquity. But more than the antique models of architecture themselves, in this period the general tendency, derived from antiquity, toward natural laws in shaping architectural forms and space was at work, something the Italian architect and art theorist Leone Battista Alberti (De re aedificatoria) was then eagerly studying. In this work he reminds architects to shape a building as an organism, modeled on living beings; the composition of a given building should be so lawfully ordered that nothing can be taken away or added – without spoiling the impression of the whole.

The Puščava church interior is divided by high semicircular arches into three aisles, of which the central one is clearly wider and higher than the two side aisles. Thus there remains above them enough space for galleries (similar to a gallery), which receive light through upper windows and are connected to the main nave by rectangular openings. On the eastern side, the two side chapels form a transept. Finally, to the east, the main one continues into a deep presbytery.

This architecture is clearly and transparently constructed and based on the mutual harmony of supporting and supported parts, enriched with an articulated console cornice supported by pilasters with rich leafy capitals, while large relief angel heads gaze down from the tops of the semicircular arches. The cross vaults, defined by ribs in the width of the arcades and in the spacing of the individual columns, cover the spatial units, rhythmically follow one another, and merge into a spatial whole. Precisely this assessment of space is what justly places the Puščava church among the rare Renaissance sacral buildings in Slovenia.

This architecture is in itself strong enough in expression that it needs no pictorial additions, since the architectural elements are also sufficiently expressive aesthetically to come fully alive before us. It is clear that this church is the most monumentally important building of the St. Pavel Benedictines.

As for the church furnishings, the main altar draws primary attention, since it is a composition reaching up to the ceiling, divided into three levels, with intermediate beams resting on twisted, fluted columns. The space between the columns is intended for sculptures, which sit on the beams, and with them the altar also resounds in height. By its design, characteristic architectural elements and ornamentation, intertwining in cartilage scrolls, and by the calm postures of the figures, the altar points to a creation around the middle of the 17th century. This was the time when the so-called “golden altars” were being made in our regions, precisely because of their brilliant gilding, which accompanied their lively and richly carved settings. The Puščava altar in this respect may not be a typical “golden altar,” since its ornamental dynamics are rather modestly measured, but the sculptures of St. Pavel and St. Peter stand out. These, in scale and above all in the expression of their faces and the treatment of their drapery, surpass the other figures on the altar.

Like many other 17th-century altars, which survived throughout the Baroque, the Puščava altar also underwent changes and additions. Even the Madonna with Child in the central niche is clearly not the work of the same hand as the figures from the settings. With a distinct stylistic stamp of the first half of the 18th century, the richly animated tabernacle and antependium with pre-Rococo ribbon ornamentation also draw attention. The latter reminds us of many other works in the Drava valley and thereby reveals to us the author – the Klagenfurt sculptor Krištof Rudolph (died before 1740). The last to supplement the Puščava high altar was the esteemed Maribor sculptor Jožef Straub (1712–1756). In keeping with the art of his time, he formed in it the altar composition, a “floating” depiction of God the Father with the Sveti Duh and flying putti.

In Puščava, three works also belong to the early Baroque – the altars in the side chapels and the pulpit. The altars (the altar of St. Benedikt and the Rosary altar) are distinctive precisely because of their settings and sculptures. With their articulated settings they occupy the entire width of the chapels and at the top lack the usual terminations – attics. Attention is drawn above all by the huge statues of saints, presented as naturalistic giants with a pathetic touch and a peculiar suggestiveness. The authors of these altars, as well as of the high altar, were certainly brought to Puščava by the builder of the church – the St. Pavel monastery.

From this point on, the search for authors becomes blurred, and we currently remain with the rather meager conclusion that Puščava, with its architecture and furnishings, is quite isolated in the Slovenian cultural sphere precisely because of the considerable influx of foreign influences. The altarpieces of the mentioned side altars likewise tell us little of their origin. Art historian Emilijan Cevc wrote that the painting of St. Benedikt, marked with the abbreviation Fr. Hint., points us to contemporary Styrian Baroque painting. Similarly, the painting of all the saints on the opposite Rosary altar approaches Graz models and even the painter Giovanni Pietro de Pomis.

The pulpit also belongs to the original furnishings of the Puščava church. With its chancel, surrounded by fluted columns and adorned with cartilage ornamentation and pomegranate motifs, it ranks among the relatively rare preserved pulpits of the 17th century in our country. Most of these pulpits were replaced in the 18th century with works from the mature and late Baroque periods.
We must be aware that the church building has always been the most important building in its village, and the people strove to make it the most beautiful. Nowhere and never has man renounced the recognition that architecture, whether sacred or urban, is something more than mere construction. Many architectural qualities have been created in the hardest material conditions, with all the thoughtfulness and feeling of man. The artworks in it may belong to a certain period and be connected with it, but they become precious only when they rise above time and thus conquer us and we them. This could be called: the essence of the timeless.

Within the shell of the Puščava church dedicated to the Devica Marija, which outwardly adorns itself with a white cloak, lies a precious core, whose nucleus is a church from the Renaissance period. In Slovenia this is rare indeed. And when we approach our home town of Lovrenc from the east, we have this Renaissance building practically in the embrace of our view – before we even step into our home.

Mojca Polona Vaupotič, art historian and art critic