Conservation of wall paintings
The Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Trinity is located at 32 Franjo Rački Street in Križevci. The single-nave church with a cruciform plan and oriented to the east has a bell tower and three wings of the monastery which enclose a rectangular cloister with the southern façade of the church. The monastery, which has a small museum, consistory hall and valuable library with incunabula, houses the ordinariate of the Diocese of Križevci.
Augustinian monastery and church were built on the site of today's complex as early as the first quarter of the 14th century. The monastery was demolished and abandoned during the 16th century, but it was rebuilt in the first half of the 17th century when there was no more danger of Ottoman attacks. The new monastery and church were used by the Franciscans until 1777, when the Greek Catholic Church became the owner. During the 19th century, the church was renovated several times, and the representative classicist façade of the church and monastery was added in 1845. The harmonious historicist unity of arts and crafts was executed according to the 1895 project by Herman Bollé.
The lower zones of the walls inside the cathedral are completely covered with wall paintings with architectural and floral motifs, and the vault has a characteristic blue sky with stars. The upper zones of the walls in the nave and the sanctuary have depictions from the life of Christ and the lives of saints, painted by prominent Croatian painters Bela Csikos-Sessia, Ivan Tišov and Celestin Mate Medović, who is also the author of evangelical figures painted on the vault of the crossing. The interior is also adorned with valuable gilded wooden iconostasis with a lot of carvings, the work of carpenter Albert Zorinić and carver Ljudevit Lowi. The iconostasis was supposed to be exhibited at the 1896 Millennium Exhibition in Budapest, but it was completed a few years later. It contains more than thirty paintings of various formats, which depict saints and angels in the spirit of Western painting, and scenes from the life of Christ. They were made by the above-mentioned authors as well as painter Ferdo Kovačević. We should also mention paintings by Ivan Bauer, located on the altars in the church lobby, stone carvings and metalwork (railings, candle holders and chandeliers) by master Đuro Hammel, and the impressive central chandelier painted by Ivan Bauer and his wife Marija.
Croatian Conservation Institute began the conservation of the wall paintings in 2011. The paintings in the interior of the cathedral, with a surface area of about 200 m2, were made using a type of tempera which degraded quickly due to the unusual way it was prepared, so parts of the paintings had previously been repaired. Depictions of saints were flaking due to excess binder in the initial recipe, and the ornamentation was pulverized due to a lack of binder. The damage was also caused by capillary and precipitation moisture in several places. During the first year of the conservation project, preventive conservation of all figural representations was performed because there was a real danger of losing parts of the paintings.
Conservation of paintings Calvary, Jesus on the Mount of Olives, Descent from the Cross and The Last Supper by Bela Csikos-Sessia, Cyril and Methodius, Sacrifice of Isaac, Death of Abel, Sermon on the Mount and Entry into Jerusalem by Ivan Tišov, and Four Evangelists by Celestin Mato Medović was carried out between 2012 and 2020. Conservation of paintings with floral motifs was performed parallel with the work on figural depictions.
Conservation (funded by the Diocese of Križevci and the Ministry of Culture and Media) was extremely complex due to the type of damage to the paintings, technique used to paint them, importance of their authors, and the need to preserve the character of the whole site where the paintings are located. The project was completed in 2020.