Paul Troger and Austrian Baroque art

An exhibition on Paul Troger should actually have been held in 1962, as this year marked the bicentenary of the famous Baroque painter's death. However, Lower Austria allowed Tyrol, the land of Paul Troger's birth, to take precedence in paying tribute to the artist.

Instead, visitors to the provincial exhibition at Altenburg Abbey, which owns the most mature and beautiful works by Troger, were able to see not only the 150 exhibits from the Tyrolean show, but also numerous other paintings by Troger that are already on display in Lower Austria.

The decision of the province of Lower Austria turned out to be the right one: “It was an idea that could not be praised enough to reorganize the exhibition that had been held in Innsbruck last year on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Troger's death in a completely different form in this monastery, which is enthroned in deep, magnificent forest solitude above the indescribably beautiful Kamptal,” wrote the Salzburger Nachrichten.

“The adaptation of Altenburg Abbey for the large Paul Troger exhibition will cost around half a million schillings”, reported the ‘Kulturberichte aus Niederösterreich’. The Federal Monuments Office carried out the restoration of the Troger frescoes in the Abbey Library. The monastery itself had made great efforts to “repair the devastation of the Russian era with its own funds”.

Altenburg Abbey was built by Josef Munggenast, a nephew and pupil of Jakob Prandtauer. Munggenast's aim was to give equal status to all the arts involved in the realization of the Baroque Gesamtkunstwerk.

The frescoes of a Baroque monastery were a kind of pictorial language that was intended to express a central idea in various variations. In Altenburg, Paul Troger dealt with the victory of light over darkness: the ceiling fresco in the Marble Hall shows the glorification of sunlight, in the library Troger lets the light of wisdom shine in the form of King Solomon, and in the dome fresco of the collegiate church, the divine light triumphs over the powers of darkness.

205,000 visitors were counted at this provincial exhibition; the record day was Whit Monday, when 3,521 people traveled to the Waldviertel Benedictine monastery. Among the Troger admirers were Federal President Adolf Schärf and Federal Chancellor Alfons Gorbach, who was accompanied by the widow of Italian Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi, a distant relative of Troger.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the choirboys of the monastery were able to present themselves to the public for the first time. The choir had been founded two years earlier to bring life to the monastery, which was suffering from a lack of young singers, and to embellish the liturgical festivities.

The Altenburg Benedictines hoped that the monastic education would awaken the desire in one or other of the 15 choirboys to join the order later on. However, they were far too tactful to urge the boys to make this decision, according to a newspaper report quoting the prefect of the choir: “We consciously avoid overfeeding our protégés religiously. Religious feeling must be allowed to develop without coercion. In Altenburg we do not believe in imposed piety.”

Altenburg Abbey