reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

“The fact is however that these extreme positions are not the full story. Some architects have made the leap to modernity and created striking contemporary church architecture that does evoke the valuable connection with tradition”.

Allowing for the difference between “modernity” and “contemporary”, and suggesting that the connection with “tradition” is an essential, Praxiteles would agree that some fine churches have been built in the modern idiom. That point we have made several times (we have mentioned Plecnik; Wagner; Barry Byrne; Gaudi). However, these examples are more the exception than the norm and I do not think that much of what is around in Ireland is anything more than imitative and deficient dross.

Regarding the ‘Church of the Autostrada’, I think I might have said:

@gunter wrote:

The exterior is less successful, but the interior is powerful and evocative.

@Praxiteles wrote:

Allowing for the difference between “modernity” and “contemporary”, and suggesting that the connection with “tradition” is an essential, Praxiteles would agree that some fine churches have been built in the modern idiom. That point we have made several times (we have mentioned Plecnik; Wagner; Barry Byrne; Gaudi).

These gentlemen hail from the 19th century and their work is essentially pre-modernist, as well as being acknowledged to be utterly individualistic, I don’t think we can include any of them in a discussion on contemporary directions in church architecture, without slipping back into revivalism.

@Praxiteles wrote:

. . . . I do not think that much of what is around in Ireland is anything more than imitative and deficient dross.

@Praxiteles wrote:

. . . proposed new oratory in Oxford dedicated to Cardinal Newman

I think the point I would try to make is that Duncan Stroik and the ‘new classicists’ [I’m assuming Oxford is a Stroik?] in seeking to return church architecture to it’s classical tradition, misses the whole point about what the church’s tradition in architecture is.

Down the centuries, the church fostered the tradition of pioneering the most adventurous and innovative architecture ever contemplated, There was no guarantee that flying buttresses would work, or that Brunelleschi’s dome would stand up, and indeed there were numerous catastrophic collapses, but that didn’t stop the church from continuing to take enormous leaps of faith in creating the legacy of phenomenal buildings that came to symbolize medieval and renaissance Europe.

For the church to abandon that visionary role as patron and progenitor of great architecture and to slip to a retrospective comfort zone would not just dishonour all those who went before, but it would be powerfully symbolic that the church itself does not believe in the future.

For the church to abandon that visionary role as patron and progenitor of great architecture and to slip to a retrospective comfort zone would not just dishonour all those who went before, but it would be powerfully symbolic that the church itself does not believe in the future.

Well, what do we make of the Salute in Venice, St. Peter’s in Rome, Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi etc.?

These gentlemen hail from the 19th century and their work is essentially pre-modernist, as well as being acknowledged to be utterly individualistic, I don’t think we can include any of them in a discussion on contemporary directions in church architecture, without slipping back into revivalism.

Surely, the quintessential hallmark of modern man?

Praxiteles is inclined to think that a plurality of approaches is possible and among them revivalism is a valid option. Indeed, one of the few canonical principles guiding church architecture in the Latin Church is that no style is canonised and hence all styles, with certain qualifications, are theoretically available for use in the construction of Latin Rite churches.

I think there is a fundamental difference. The great works of the renaissance, like those three examples, were completely new and innovative works, inspired by classical antiquity yes, but radical in their modernity too.

Diachronicastically, my reading of Leon Battista Alberti, Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio is that all three understood what they were doing in terms of “reviving” the architecture of the ancients.

Synchronistically, they undoubtedly generated something quite innovative which may have been facilitated by the absence of any significant constructions dating from antiquity with the excetions of the Maison Carée at Nimes, the Pantheon, and the Roman triumphal arches.

Praxiteles does not share Appelles’ view on this one and believes this to be a disaster qua church. The only purpose it serves is to illustrate the dire necessity of re-discovering the principles of an ars aedificandi. This may as well be the Sydney opera house.

A lot of people think that Meier should have stuck with rectangles.

This point is well borne out by his rectangular shelter built over the Ara Pacis. By far a much better product than the Tor Tre Teste expedition – but, having said that, it was unforgiveable to lob something like it on the Lungotevere not to mention outside of the main portals of San Gerolamo dei Croati.

Raphael’s creation:

@Praxiteles wrote:

Praxiteles does not share Appelles’ view on this one and believes this to be a disaster qua church. The only purpose it serves is to illustrate the dire necessity
of re-discovering the principles of an ars aedificandi. This may as well be the Sydney opera house.

OK so . .I’ll keep my own opinions on modern Church architecture to myself in the future :rolleyes:

. . I’ll just get back to learning a little Latin.

Reassembled 15th-century altarpiece to go home
St Korbinian panels by Friedrich Pacher will return to the Austrian pilgrimage church

By Martin Bailey

london. A 500-year altarpiece by Friedrich Pacher has recently been reassembled and will go back to the Alpine village for which it was commissioned. The wings were lost in the mid 19th century and have been purchased after a Nazi-era restitution case.

Dating from around 1480, the St Korbinian altarpiece has now been restored and is on temporary display in Vienna’s Belvedere gallery (until 18 July), before it returns to the pilgrimage church in Assling, in East Tyrol.

The panels were made by Tyrolean painter Friedrich Pacher. In the centre of the altarpiece is a sculpture of St Korbinian by Hans Klocker. The 3.5m-high ensemble remained on Assling’s high altar until 1660, when a baroque altarpiece was installed, and the earlier one was moved to a side wall.

Between 1850 and 1864 the double-sided wings were removed, and presumably sold off. In August 1927 its predella with scenes of the life of St Korbinian was stolen, but was recovered two months later.

It was not until 1999 that the wings were identified by German art historian Ulrich Söding. They were then on loan from the Dutch state art collection to the Stedelijk Museum in Zutphen. Further research revealed that by the early 1930s they were at St Ignatius College in Valkenburg, near Maastricht. The double-sided wings had already been separated, creating four panels, of which two had also been cut down at the top and bottom. In 1936 the wings were bought by Amsterdam dealer Jacques Goudstikker, whose collection was subject to a forced sale by the Nazis in 1940. The panels then went to Hermann Göring’s hunting lodge at Carinhall (and were returned to the Netherlands after the war).

In 2006 the Dutch government restituted the Goudstikker paintings to his heirs, who consigned most of them to Christie’s in 2007. The two pairs of wing paintings were sold as different lots, which means that they might have become separated after more than five centuries. The outer pair fetched £24,000 and the inner pair £192,000. Both were bought by the Tyrol authorities.

Conservation of the wings has proved complex. The double-sided wings had been sawn in two, and the wooden panels had then been thinned and later mounted on a chipboard support. The previous restoration, in 1963, was very poorly done, and retouched colours had aged and whitened, leaving blotches.

At the Vienna conservation studio of the Bundes*denkmalamt (federal monument office) the ensemble was examined with x-rays and infrared reflectography, revealing Pacher’s underdrawing. The panels were cleaned and the damaged 1963 retouchings were removed and redone. The two which had been cut down were brought back to their original dimensions, with modern additions. The wings were then inserted into new frames, so that they can be displayed as originally intended.