DATING THE NEWLY DISCOVERED CEILING PAINTING IN THE HOUSE OF ESTLAND’S NOBILITY IN TALLINN

Abstract

In the course of renovating the Estonian Knighthood (Ritterschaft)House in the autumn of 2022, a magnificent find came to light in theceiling of a first floor room – a figural plafond painting on a canvasattached to the ceiling. This find is sensational since it adds to thenumber of rare and fragile canvas plafonds, only a few of whichsurvive in Estonia. This article demonstrates how archival researchand dendrochronology can work together hand in hand. Accordingto historical documents, this part of the Knighthood House was builtaround the year 1690, because it was described as nearly finishedin the spring of 1691. By applying dendrochronological dating, it
 was possible to ascertain that the trees that form the main woodenstructures were felled after the growing season of 1689 and wereused in construction, probably in 1690. The Üxküll family of Vigalamanor sold their newly completed town palace to the Knighthood ofEstonia in 1694 for unknown reasons. The plafond painting probablyoriginates from the period between those two dates, 1690 and 1694.Thus, the Knighthood House’s plafond ceiling is the only firmlydated painting of this kind in Estonian architecture. It originatesfrom an earlier period than most other plafond paintings in Tallinn,which are assessed using stylistic comparison as dating from theperiod after the Great Northern War, specifically from 1721 to 1760.The nearly 60 m2 plafond is certainly the largest in Estonia. The useof distemper and oil paint techniques together makes this paintingremarkable. It is also the only known plafond with more than onepainting layer from different periods. At the time of writing, thepainting has not yet been exposed to view. Its thematic subject matterand the details of its technical realisation will be revealed onlyafter its restoration. The question of the authorship of the plafondpainting also remains unanswered at this stage. The overpaintingwith Rococo ornamentation covering the original painting can becautiously associated with the name of the guild painter, GotthardHolm, who was paid for work done in the Knighthood House inthe 1760s.