Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Unknown Artists: Slovene
16th-century, 17th-century, 18th-century, 19th-century
Ljubljana, Slovenia: National Gallery of Slovenia
83%
Christ Crucified (from Dramlje). c1515. Carved wood with pigment
At play here there's an extraordinary blend of medieval stereotypy (the somehow too-gaunt body and face; the perfect crescent of the spear-wound below his ribs, echoed by Christ's slit-eyes) and more realistically modern expressivity (the harrowed mouth and cheeks; the perfectly modeled kneecaps). And then there's the overall shape of the thing — that exquisite arabesque from toes to shoulders, thrown into crisis by the cock of the head; the folds in his loincloth that seem to be cutting into his hips, a further violence. Unfortunately, the museum has hung this piece flat against the wall, making it look altogether too frontal. (TFS, 2025)
Stična, Slovenia: Slovenian Museum of Christianity
79%
Saint Catherine of Siena. 18th century. Tempera on paper and embroidery on silk
These old Slovene embroideries are confections, but somewhere in them there's a seriousness that's worth dealing with. It's almost more of a conceptual seriousness than it is something that has to do with what's visually manifest. Namely, what's more impactful here than the painting of Catherine or the floral pattern that surrounds her or even the combination of these two things into a unified "picture" (Catherine leans to the left along with the white bulb behind her; the sunflower's split stem up top rhymes with the parted curtains in the image) is the simple coexistence of these two disparate mediums and visual schemes within the same artwork, and the implicit assertion that they are in fact well-fitted to each other. The forced coherence of the artwork ultimately produces a real coherence, whose echo is the vague visual affinity between the painting and its elaborate silk border, but whose original call is their difference — the red that finds no analogue in the embroidery, the twinkle and dimension of the sewn components against the dull flatness of the tempera. (TFS, 2025)
Stična, Slovenia: Stična Abbey
71%
Stična Stuccos. 1620. Stucco
Apparently the crucifixion is derived from Tintoretto's famous version of the scene that lives at the Scuolo Grande di San Rocco, which would perhaps suggest this artist's Venetian rather than purely Carniolan derivation. I imagine some of the other scenes here were adapted from Italian paintings as well, but I couldn't tell. The most remarkable aspect of this sequence of reliefs is the predominant shallowness (though not flatness) of the ground and even of many of the figures, but then the intense, almost exaggerated projection of each tableau's "main characters." In the Crucifixion, Christ extends so far off of the surface of the wall that there are shadows not only around but also behind him and the cross; in the Judgement, God appears poised to fall off of his substrate while all the figures below seem in the process of getting sucked back into it and vanishing. It's a source of tension deeply set within the artwork's stylistic genes, and it almost makes up for the stilted over-modeled appearance of many of the figures. Less a masterpiece than a historical oddity — a well-made baroque confection — that manages to surprise from a European backwater. (TFS, 2025)
Stična, Slovenia: Slovenian Museum of Christianity
71%
Saint Frances. early 19th century. Hand-coloured print and engraving on silk
Not quite as arresting as the construction for Saint Catherine that hangs beside it at the Slovenian Museum of Christianity, but still a confounding blend of picture and pattern, of unlike mediums that refuse ever to gel. It's relative shortcomings have to do with the larger border that surrounds the image of Frances, which provides a safe transition from the image out into the embroidery that detracts from how different these visual modes are; with the busyness of the image of Frances, which provides quite a few opportunities to notice affinities between the picture and the needlework; with the lack of variation within the embroidered component, which makes it seem too cleanly to be a border around the print; and with the ornamental border which the image itself contains, which though pretty acts as a further intermediary between the print and the stitching. (TFS, 2025)