Concept si identitate in reinterpretarea unui monument de sculptura baroca din Timisoara

Abstract

This article attempts to give new impetus to the research on writing history from monuments as primary sources, especially when written sources are missing or lacking completely as an exercise of documenting a historical period. The case study we are conducting our investigation on is the monument to Trinity (the only one that has a sketch and was often considered a work of G.R. Donner) in Timişoara which is analysed through historical–documentary sources and the interpretative frameworks of the iconography and iconology as parts of the Pietas austriaca phenomenon. Reflecting various identity concepts, the visual propaganda of these types of monuments stands as highly symbolic and having a function of social coagulation through an Enlightened Catholicism. An analysis of the stylistic traits in the manner of shape, interpretation and content, highlight the idea that G.R. Donner could have authored sketches, and the monument to trinity of Timişoara, but it was a disciple of his academic circle in Vienna, that could have authored the monument raised after the plague episode of 1738–1739 in Timişoara. The article answers to why were these monuments used as a projection of Catholic propaganda in public spaces in disseminating the principles of a church that helped political power. Moreover, the discourse becomes productive framework for future exploration situating the monument within a global art historical context and a survey of doctrina imaginis advocated. A stylistic analysis of several certified works of the author highlighted a classicizing late baroque formula as the style of the Banat in the century of the Enlightenment.