ÖZKD LXXVIII 2024 Heft 3, pp. , 2025/01/29
Und sie stehen noch
Zum Umgang mit mittelalterlicher Bauplastik
The fifteenth-century limestone baptismal font and its nineteenth-century wooden cover were brought from the Parish Church of Saint Peter and Paul in Münsteuer, Upper Austria, to the workshops of the Bundesdenkmalamt (Austrian Federal Monuments Office) at the Arsenal in Vienna in 2022. This was because the baptismal font’s stone substance had become fragmented – cracked open by rust due to the corrosion of the iron elements that
had been installed – and because the paintwork had been progressively lost, parts were missing, and the font’s cover had lost its polychromy. Scientific examinations have dated the surviving paint layers as belonging to the
nineteenth and twentieth century. Restoration measures included bonding all fragmented stone parts, removing rusting iron parts, and reinforcing and retouching the paint layers, among other things. Wood cracks in the
baptismal font cover were closed, its paintwork was reinforced and retouched, and missing parts were replaced.
