The high altar
A Baroque high altarpiece in gold
A miner from Hallstatt is charged with chopping up the miner's altarpiece, a Gothic carved altar, into firewood. He does not obey the order and saves it from being destroyed.
Half a century later, the large Hallstatt altarpiece of the Virgin Mary in the same church is also in grave danger. It is supposed to be replaced in 1799 by one of the Baroque altarpieces from the collegiate church of Mondsee Abbey. Since no money can be found for demolition and transport, this too is saved.
What is the cause of this destructive rage? The artistic program of the Council of Tridentine demands more connection to the people and more realistic depictions of the saints. Images that depict religious content in a false or un-Christian way are to be removed from churches. Artists are put into the tight corset of Catholic doctrine.
This is also one of the reasons why the Gothic winged altarpieces, of which there were almost 2000 in Upper Austria, were destroyed, with a few exceptions. They were gotten rid of just as the Gothic period got rid of Romanesque art and architecture. The carved altarpieces were burned and sometimes only the panels were saved, a few of which can be admired in our museums.
Johann Georg Finsterwalder, pastor in Altmünster until his death, commissions Micheal Zürn, whose workshop was in Freisitz Mühlwang in Gmunden, to make a high altarpiece worthy of the painting by Joachim von Sandrart. The mighty structure is completed two years later in 1790 and its artistic quality far surpasses that of Sandrart's painting.
Finsterwalder inherits a significant fortune from his parents and uses this to pay for the altarpiece. His high ecclesiastical and secular titles – he is a protonotary apostolic who drafts papal charters and a paladin or religious knight of the imperial court – mean he has the right to his own coat of arms, three forest trees against a blue background. Above the coat of arms is the hat of the protonotary apostolic, with six tassels on the left and right respectively.
At the centre of the altarpiece is the painting "Death of St. Benedict", signed by Joachim von Sandrart and commissioned by Count Herberstorff’s widow in 1636. Sandrart, a respected art connoisseur and merchant, had more talent as a painter for imitation than originality. The mighty structure with figures of saints was completed by the sculptor Michael Zürn. If one compares his sculptures with Sandrart's painting, the difference in artistic quality is immediately visible. Sandrart's painting is characterised by the declamatory, pious behavior of the main protagonists, awkward gestures of the angels and a lack of cohesion among the various groups of characters. In short, a weak composition.
The structure emerges from immediately behind the tabernacle; the painting "Death of St. Benedict" is in the centre and framed by four mighty columns, between which stand the figures of St. Florian and St. George, which are over two meters tall. The columns end in a frieze above, bordered by cornices, in the imitated style of antiquity.
The pairs of columns with Corinthian capitals are connected by a mighty arch with the Finsterwalder coat of arms beneath. The finishing touch is the soul weighing Archangel Michael with his flaming sword and scales rising almost to the vault of the 16-meter-high choir.
The extraordinary emotion of the figures, how impressively lifelike they are and the magnificent drapery of their clothing betray the characteristic traces of Zürn's work and testify to the high skill of the master.
The neo-Gothic altarpiece is not well received by the people; it is removed and rebuilt in 1937 with the few remnants of Zürn's altar. Today, the altar is still characterised by Zürn's excellent sculptures from the 17th century, but the angels have been brought down onto the altar table and the saints placed left and right of the altar. The altar table and tabernacle from the 19th century neo-Gothic altar remain.
Zürn’s high altar from the 17th century can be said to be, without a doubt, a lost masterpiece.
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