Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Unknown Artists: Carniolan
17th-century
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)