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Abstract

Between 1759 and 1785 Iso Walser, Offizial of the Fürstabtei St. Gallen (Switzerland), had around 40 churches and chapels on St. Gallen territory erected, restored or rebuilt. For this well-documented undertaking he relied on a team of artists and artisans, including the Vorarlberger architect Johann Ferdinand Beer, and the Moosbrugger brothers, prolific stucco workers active on both sides of the confessional divide. The works range from unique buildings such as the St. Johannes church in Bernhardzell to almost generic interventions in existing chapels and shrines. Walser’s campaign, situated in an area surrounded by Reformed territories, established Catholic markers in the complicated confessional and political landscape of late the eighteenth century, at the cusp of modern Switzerland. As a carefully staged operation in a dynamic context, the campaign serves as a test case to gauge the religious and political implications of ornament. It also illustrates the proliferation of rococo ornament in the area between the Alps and the Bodensee, and the considerable corpus of religious rococo still present there today.

About Maarten Delbeke

Maarten Delbeke holds the Chair of the History and Theory of Architecture at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zürich. He researches and teaches the history and theory of art and architecture in Europe from the 17th century up to the present. He is particularly interested in the mediation of architecture in print, be it in text or image, digital or analogue. He has published on baroque Rome, with particular attention on sculpture (Bernini, Algardi) and its literary reception (Bernini’s biographies, Michelangelo Lualdi), and has studied the writings and milieu of the Jesuit Sforza Pallavicino as a conduit into 17th-century aesthetics.