Kapelle Sogn Bistgaun, Degen

The chapel cannot be visited.

The chapel in the open field and without a cemetery is remarkable in many ways. Four of the famous artists who have worked in the area have left their mark:

Hans Ardüser, the schoolmaster, chronicler and itinerant painter, painted a monumental Christopher on the tower (2). The sight of him was supposed to protect the faithful in the event of a sudden death. The Memmingen workshop of Ivo Strigel supplied a Gothic winged altar in 1506. In the predella Christ was immortalized in three fields with the 12 disciples as half-figures (3). In the shrine, next to Mary with the Child on the left, are John the Baptist with a Bible and the Lamb and St. Sebastian as a fashionable knight. On the right are St. George with the lance and the plague saint Roch with a staff (4).

Johann Ritzaus Selkingen (see also Vrin, Parish Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary) transformed the altar into baroque forms in 1710 and supplemented it with two side altars (5). Hans Jakob Greutter painted on the right side the large picture with the visitation of the plague (6) as well as the five images of saints in the nave. Ritz also had a use for the two wings of the Strigel altar: they crown his altar as a triptych in the gable (7): St. Catherine on the left, Magdalene and Verena in the middle, and St. Barbara on the right.

The carved and coloured wooden ceiling (8) was sold to the National Museum in Zurich in 1894 and replaced by a copy.

Sogn Bistgaun, in turn, belongs to the plague saints, which indicates the constant threat to the population in the Middle Ages.

Text and photos: Walter Müller (wmueller@hispeed.ch) in cooperation with Surselva Tourism