Via Dolorosa (Stations of the Cross)

Early Baroque Lifesize Sculpture in Slovakia

We normally associate the Baroque style with high art by sophisticated sculptors and painters, although it was often intended to impress a religious message on the common people as well as the intelligentsia. This film, however, focuses on what could be called `folk baroque,' created by artisans - lifelike carvings making up an extraordinary Stations of the Cross series at Rimov, a remote mid-seventeenth-century shrine in southern Bohemia. Here, a series of twenty-five white chapels, ranged over a five-mile route, contain lifesized figures enacting the fourteen traditional scenes from the last hours along the `way of sorrows' leading up to Christ's crucifixion. The creation of the series was conceived and organized by a Jesuit, Jan Gurre, and throughout the Baroque period the Jesuit influence almost succeeded in turning art into a propaganda tool for the Counter-Reformation. Overwhelming church environments were created with all-encircling images and staggeringly illusionistic painted ceilings, which, combined with impassioned pulpit performances, were designed to sweep the congregation into unquestioning religious fervor. There was a general urge towards a `total art' that involved the audience completely (opera was developing at the same time). This is powerfully demonstrated by the work shown in this film, which is a kind of forerunner of modern `environment' and `installation' art. Tellingly, as we pass the figures in the film, experiencing them as did the pilgrims to the shrine, the total work is described in terms of its `actors,' its `sets' and its `director,' emphasizing its dramatic, even cinematic force.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.