Podpeč, Church of St Helena

The Church of St Helena was erected in the local cemetery of the settlement of Podpeč, above Črni Kal. This single-nave Gothic church was remodelled during the Baroque period, when both the nave and the appearance of the projecting polygonal sanctuary were altered.

The interior of the church was originally decorated with Late Gothic wall paintings; however, during the construction of the railway line in the 1960s, the frescoes were detached. The fragments subsequently entered the collections of the Regional Museum in Koper and the National Gallery in Ljubljana, before recently being returned to their original positions. The authorship of the wall paintings has been attributed to the workshop of John of Kastav, and they are dated by an inscription on the painted border bearing the year 1489.

The surviving fragments allow for the partial reconstruction of the iconographic programme of the north and south walls. The upper register of the north wall contained scenes from the Christological cycle, of which fragmentary depictions of the Crucifixion and the Adoration of the Magi are preserved today. Beneath these, a row of female saints was depicted within painted arcades, among whom St Ursula and St Agatha can be identified. Fragments depicting scenes from the Life of St Helena originally belonged to the upper zone of the south wall, while the lower register contained a corresponding sequence of saintly figures set within simply articulated architectural frames. The scenes in the upper register of both the north and south walls were separated by a painted border featuring a rainbow motif filled with stencilled ornament.

The wall paintings were discovered by Branko Fučić in 1949, and in the same year they were reported by Ciril Velepič in the article “Kulturni spomeniki Slovenske Istre,” published in the journal Varstvo spomenikov.

Iconographic programme:

North wall: 1. Crucifixion; 2. Adoration of the Magi; 3. St Ursula; 4. St Agatha; 5. Unidentified female saint. South wall: 6. St Helena Interrogating Judas; 7. Fragment of the Legend of the Finding of the True Cross; 8. unidentified female saint, 9. unidentified female saint, 10. unidentified female saint, 11. unidentified female saint.