The Celje Ceiling is comprised of eleven paintings
done with tempera on canvas, their total area amounting to almost 143 square
metres. The ceiling is the only example of secular illusionistic painting in
Slovenia from around the year 1600; its artist still remains unknown. The
paintings were most probably commissioned by Count Johann Ambros von Thurn-Valsassina
(1537–1621). The recent researches have confirmed that it is the only extant
ceiling of its sort preserved in situ within
a broader European cultural space. It was discovered by chance under a newer
canvas plafond during the renovation of the hall in the Old Counts’ Palace of
Celje (the present-day Celje Regional Museum) in 1926. In 1929, Dr. France
Stele published the first comprehensive, stylistically in-depth study on the
Celje Ceiling and dated it in the beginning of the 17th century. He
identified earlier reproductive prints that had served as models for the motifs
of individual paintings and defined them in terms of contents and iconography.
As to the motifs, the ceiling is composed of a central field with illusionistic
architectural structure opening a view into the open sky, which is flanked with
the scenes of the four seasons along the longitudinal sides. Along each of the
two shorter sides, one scene of the Battle Between Aeneas’ Trojans and the
Latin People features, and in the corner fields there are The Four Disgracers:
Icarus, Ixion, Phaeton and Tantalus.
The exact date of the finding of the Celje Ceiling is
unknown, but by means of surviving documents it is possible to reconstruct
approximately the events from May 1926 to November 1927, when the restored
ceiling was returned to its place.
In a letter of May 19, 1926, the Celje City
Administrative Body asked conservator France Stele to come and see the Old
Counts’ Palace and give “necessary guidance for its reconstruction”. Stele examined
the hall in the Palace on June 2, 1926, and in a letter to the City
Administrative Body he subsequently gave the guidelines for the restoration,
advising them to remove “the lower-lying plafond that conceals the old plafond
in the jury hall”. Furthermore, he suggested that the “precious paintings” be
given for restoration to the “academy trained painter and restorer Mat.
Sternen”. Sternen wrote down the
analysis of their state of preservation on July 3, 1926, from which we can
learn, e.g., that the roof leaked at some time in the past, that the paintings
were very dirty and stained by smoke, that the canvas was mouldered away and
fell off at places so that years ago it had to be “underlaid with another
canvas”. He made a sketch of the ceiling and marked the position of the motifs,
proposed a way to restore the paintings and assessed the cost of the
restoration at 50,000 Dinars. The photographs taken before the restoration show
the factual state of preservation perfectly.
On July 19, 1926, a nineteen-member commission was
summoned to Celje to do an “on-site commission inspection”, and they accepted
Sternen’s offer at the regular public meeting on July 21, approving the amount
of 60,000 Dinars for the restoration. Ivan Zorman, the then manager of the
National Gallery, also expressed his positive opinion about the restoration
proposal.
The painted ceiling canvases began to be disassembled
and taken to the Celje Hall on November 29, 1926; a note of December 2 reports
that the disassembling and the transfer to the Celje Hall were concluded.
Sternen commenced the restoration in the winter of 1926 and finished it in the
autumn of 1927.
The wooden decorative and load-bearing construction
that joined the painted canvases and provided a proper form and support to them
also had to be restored and conserved. Engaged for this work was the artisan
artist and gilder of Celje Miloš Hohnjec.
When the project was coming to an end, France Stele
and architect Jože Plečnik gave a positive professional evaluation about the
work performed and made suggestions for a proper arrangement of the hall. Matej
Sternen and Miloš Hohnjec both finished their work by October 25, 1927, when
the hall in the Old Counts’ Palace was ready to receive the paintings back to
the ceiling.
The
Celje Ceiling is one of the rare majestic monuments in Slovenia on which
Sternen’s restoration-conservation interventions survive until today. Almost a
hundred years ago, they followed the key points of modern
restoration-conservation doctrine and they have continued to serve their
purpose to the present day – preservation and the overall presentation of the
monument.