The Chapel of St. Martin in Stari Brod – from Vernacular Architecture to Baroque Heritage

Sa？etak The wooden chapel of St. Martin in Stari Brod is a rare example of traditional, vernacular architecture with a preserved Baroque interior. Over the centuries it has played an important part in the everyday life of villagers as a gathering place for worship and a powerful symbol of the village’s survival. Archival records mention the chapel for the frst time in 1699. Originally, it was laid out as a single-nave chapel with a polygonal sanctuary and a small atrium on top of which stood a bell tower. Its present form originated when the atrium was incorporated to form a vestibule in 1736. It was built using a traditional technology of construction with oak planks laid over stone and brick foundations and interlocked without the use of brackets (socalled dovetail joint). What is particular about the chapel is its interior design: all the walls, the ceiling over the nave and the sanctuary vault are lined with a vividly painted wainscoting made of 88 wooden panels framed with decorative laths. The panels depict motifs of intertwined symmetrical ribbons with hanging acanthus leaves, rose ？owers, tulips, carnations, peonies and grape vines, painted in vivid colours in the mid-18th century. The main altar with the altarpiece of St. Martin was installed in 1743. By the end of the 20th century, the chapel was rather neglected and had a dilapidated roof. As the roof covering was damaged, the interior was exposed to rainfall, which caused severe damage to the wooden support and the paintwork. An earlier replacement of the roof covering with beavertail tiles instead of shingles led to static displacements and deformations of the building material and caused further damage to the wainscoting panels. The main altar was removed from the chapel in 1991 during a war-time evacuation. Renovation work on the chapel of St. Martin started with an architectural survey of the existing condition and conservation research of the painted wainscoting. The wainscoting was then dismantled, and construction repair of the chapel ensued, which lasted from 2007 to 2012. During the course of it, the entire chapel was disassembled in order for the foundations to be repaired and the damaged or rotted parts of the building replaced. Damaged parts of the roof construction were also repaired and the beavertail tiles replaced with oak shingles, modelled after the original covering. On the dismantled elements of the wainscoting, necessary restoration treatments were carried out, which involved a mechanical removal of dirt from the back of the panels, gamma-ray disinsection, fxing of