Bratislava – Old Town Hall (Stained Glass from St. Martin’s Church)

The museum seems rather proud to have these four pieces of stained glass which were located in St. Martin’s Cathedral in the city. The stained glass dates from 1667 and it was donated by Johann Glitzer, a master hatter and they were originally located in the second window of the northern wall of the shrine in the Cathedral. However, in the first half of the eighteenth century they were removed as George Rafael Donner was leading a reconstruction of the Chapel of St. John the Almoner in a Baroque style. That meant out went Glitzer’s gift.

This Baroque chapel was in itself fortunate to survive as tastes changed and the whole cathedral was made to look Gothic in the nineteenth century, but they kept the chapel’s decorative features. It’s not a major exhibit in the museum, but the quality of the stained glass is high and I do like that a decision was made to keep it rather than just chuck it in some skip (or whatever the early eighteenth century equivalent was).