A Little Guy Reminding Me ...

Yesterday, when I did my evening reading – that starts usually here and ends almost always there again – and I saw this putto saying “Coucou!” (= the French “Hallo!”) I knew I had to write something about. I mean the charming boys, made of stone, wood, stucco, gesso or metal, that were popular as elements of architecture during the baroque era.

I had photos like this in mind, showing putti doing different, mostly funny things, or looking important or scary like the two guys on the photo above. They are decorating part of a side altar in the parish church of Stift Vorau. You find most of the putti in baroque churches, in baroque staircases, in baroque gardens, on walls and ceilings of baroque buildings, on baroque balustrades, next to baroque portals etc, generally on places where many people were passing by.

Browsing through my photo archive – searching for “baroque” and “putti” – I came across these photos (s. above and below). They show the church interior of the Wildon* parish church (in Styria) where there are several putti around the pipe organ. When I watched the photos I was equally overwhelmed as I was when I entered the church for the first time on a very warm and humid summer day.

Seven putti and two grown up angels (at the very top), playing different instruments, are a kind of celestial orchestra to accompany the organ which was originally in the former Carmelite´s monastery church in Graz. It was always usual to sell parts of the interior fittings to other churches to raise money for a new interior.

If you look at photo number three, you can see a small part of the pulpit on the left. It belonged like the organ to the Carmelites in Graz and is a masterwork of its own. At the bottom there are sculptures of the four evangelists, at the top – please look at them from the left to the right – you can see the exciting representation of Elia´s ascension. He is driving an open car, pulled by two horses, and it seems they are going to jump from the pulpit in the very next moment.

*Wildon is a market town in the South of Styria, not too far from Graz, and it is really worth to visit the parish church.