Lavric AHAS 5angl
Ana LAVRIČ
A plan by the Graz architect Joseph Hueber for the cathedral in Gornji Grad
Newly discovered documents corroborate the attribution of the cathedral in Gornji Grad, Slovenia, proposed several years ago by Walter Koschatzky. The letters which the Ljubljana bishop Ernst Amadeus Attems (1743–1757), in his opposition to state control over the Church, repeatedly sent to the governmental office in Graz reveal that the church in Gornji Grad was built between 1752 and 1758/60 to the plans of the leading Graz architect Joseph Hueber (1715–1787). In the hitherto scholarly literature the opinion has gained ground, although overshadowed by slight doubt, that the author of the plans for the church was the Ljubljana building master Matija Perski (1681–1761), who did, indeed, supervise the construction works and, being a skilled architect himself, also contributed, in a way, to the high quality of the building which is one of the most outstanding Slovene Baroque monuments, important also within the Central-European context. The church in Gornji Grad is a logical link between two other works by Hueber, the church in St. Veit, being a few years older, and the one in Weizberg near Graz, being some years younger. All of them demonstrate certain similarities in the ground plan, architectural articulation and facade, althought the church in Gornji Grad, unlike the other two which are designed in the late-Baroque style, is in many ways still modelled on high-Baroque examples (e.g. the classical location of the dome over the crossing of the nave and the transept, and its construction on a tall drum). It is most likely that the client, together with all the members of the diocesan clergy – who unanimously decided on a design including a dome, which they deemed more suitable and "handsome" for a cathedral – consciously relied on Ljubljana Cathedral, built at the beginning of the 18th century to the plans of Andrea Pozzo, also envisaging a dome which, however, was only built in the 19th century.